Hello and welcome to Glasgow University, 
I'm going to talk a little bit about the
Technical Art History MLitt for you. Here's 
the core team of our teaching staff, myself
Christina Young, Margaret Smith, 
Mark Richter, and Caroline Rae
The Technical Art History programme 
will give you sound grounding in
science and the conservation 
of works of art
and how you interpret them, but
that's all done in the context of
art history, philosophy, and social history. 
It will also give you transferable skills
that you can take onto further research
or into the workplace. There are five
main elements to the course: 'Research
Methods and Practice' is about how to do such
different approaches to research,
'Testimonies', so artist interviews through
studies on old techniques and paintings
and then there's the more practical courses
where you start to look at objects
from paintings to replicas, have
workshops and lectures and seminars, 
and 'Authentic Artworks' brings that into
the 21st century and looking at ideas of
replicas, ideas of philosophy within
contemporary art as well. You will also have
an opportunity to do a placement or
extended writing in the second semester,
these can be institutions within the
University of Glasgow or in the wider
area of Scotland or sometimes further afield.
Then the research project which 
is a 10 to 12 weeks project where
you can really concentrate on one area
that you're interested and I'm going to give
you a few examples of the kind of things
that we've done recently. Let's just go
back to the workshops: we do
replica workshops which all the students
really enjoying, this is one example
where we're making replicas of gilding
techniques based on works of arts you'd 
have studied and every student gets the
opportunity to do this with a
small replica not a whole complete
painting, but it's teaching about
technique. We also look at the
contemporary art or modern art, so
for instance this is one of our students
looking at John Harmon painting in the
collection at the Hunterian and then she went on
to make a small replica; replicating
the techniques that he originally used
to produce his work of art.
We also, apart from the core teaching
staff, have lots of interesting guest
lecturers from all around the country
and sometimes from further afield when
they're visiting. So National Galleries of
Scotland with their curators, conservators
conservation scientists, and also we have
scholars from other institutions that will
be coming to give a research 
lecture and would often give
a special lecture just for you. So here's
the selection of some of the guest
visiting lectures we've had in the last
year or so, we've had painting
conservator from Tate, paintings
conservator from National Gallery London, an exchange
with painting conservators in the Yale
University Art Gallery, our own art
gallery here at the Hunterian, part of the
University next to the library, and
inside Peter Black, now retired,
curator of paintings at the Hunterian
working with one of our students last
year and curators from other places and
here's Mark Bamburgh a stained glass
paintings conservator working here in
Glasgow and our students went to visit
his studio, look at his techniques
We're also involved in exhibitions for
instance the Barcroft exhibition which
textile conservation students took part in.
Placements: while students get to do a
placement if they wish or an
extended writing essay in the second
semester, typically they'll work within
somewhere in the university or within
Scotland somewhere, sometimes they go
further afield. This is one our students
from two years ago working the archives
and otherwise there are students this
year who worked at the National Galleries of Scotland
PLEASE NOTE: OPTIONS MAY BE ADAPTED FOR 2020
Dissertations happen in the summer, 
kind of from May-June onwards and
again a variety of topics involving
institutions within Scotland but also
sometimes further afield, so in this case
we had a student working on Stubbs
another working on Raeburn with the
National Gallery and the National Trust for Scotland
And then we work on other
kind of things like the Citizens Theatre
the paint schemes with the auditorium,
and we go into the print studio,
we're interested in prints as well not
just paintings, and here's when our
student went to Abbotsford to Walter Scott's
house looking at a painting from his
collection as well, part of these became
research projects and some of these will
be research projects in the future as well.
So welcome to the University of Glasgow.
The campus is in a fun friendly city and, 
for us, we have many benefits of
being a big university, we have
the Hunterian Study Centre which allows
research across our fields 
and also we have other
institutions in Glasgow: Glasgow School of Art, 
Glasgow Print Studio, the Citizens Theatre
it's a fantastic place to be based. 
So this is Kelvin Hall which is across the
road from the main university campus, and
in here we have the technical art history
research studios and conservation lab,
and this is where we do lots of our
technical examinations. At the
bottom here you can us in the
painting store and there in the
conservation studio - looking at three
Stubbs paintings. Apart from that we also
have an extensive library, it's huge - 11 floors
with amazing books and resources 
and other research resources.
We as part of Technical Art History 
have a dedicated TAHG lab where we
do a lot of our microscopy, and then
we have in common all state-of-the-art
technical examination equipment: UV, XRF, 
the latest a IRR cameras, and we also have
access to engineering science and we
need that for particular projects or
particular dissertations
It's fair to say we spend a bit of time 
looking down at microscopes, but we
also do other things, we look at
paintings and we also sometimes work
with other departments for instance we
worked with the Quantum Optics Group
with their new camera to assess whether 
it'll be useful for us, we like to look at new
technologies as well as traditional
technologies within our group.
So the Technical Art History Group includes 
all the students but also other researchers
and postdocs and anyone else who is
involved in technical examination within
the university, and we work widely
internationally with different institutions
as well including Yale, the Prado, we have projects 
at the moment at White Cube in London
and National Galleries of Scotland. 
You will be part of a rich and fun team
Apart from the TAH Group, you 
also have history of art and
there is a large PGT cohort with which to
interact and within the school,
you belong to the school of Cultural and 
Creative Arts, there's many seminars and
research activities going that you're
allowed to take part in, and welcome to
take part in, as well as workshops and
societies, wealth of things and that's
just a school, let alone the College of
Arts, and the rest of university of course.
You also get an opportunity to go on a study
trip in the spring, usually we go to
Madrid, Amsterdam, London or Munich 
and go to conservation studios, meet
curators, meet conservators, meet students
from other programmes and get a sense of the
professional context in which you'll be
working in the future.
So where do you go once you finish
at the University of Glasgow?
Well in recent years our students have gone
on to be archivists, assistant 
curators, they've gone on to do
PhDs and they've gone on to work with a
variety of arts fields, some have gone on
to do further conservation training as
well as.
That was just a little bit of background 
about what we do here at Glasgow
and if you have any further 
questions please email me
have a look at our Twitter page @TAHG_Glasgow 
to see what we've been up to,
and also our research page on
the link that's given here and good luck
and I hope to see you soon.
