For more than thirty thousand years, humans have been drawing, painting, carving, chiselling and creating images for many different purposes, in many different times and places. Yet the term art is much more recent and the answers to the questions "What is art?" and "What is an image?" remain elusive and contested today. Is art a glazed piece of pottery from Multan? Is it a black and white photograph of migrant workers in a Brazilian gold mine? Is art neon graffiti on a subway wall in Tokyo or a resistance poster from South Africa? Could an image be an oil painting, a moment of suspense in a T.V soap or the refraction of light through a kaleidoscope? Is it a metaphor or a memory?

In our age of mass communication, how can we make sense of art works and images in all their physical and temporal forms? As the academic study of visual culture, art history can contribute significantly to this quest. It can do so by not only concerning itself with art works in the classical sense (such as paintings and sculptures) but by also exploring ubiquitous, profane and ephemeral images - images of the everyday; of news, of entertainment, of popular culture, of science and technology.

These are some of the issues that will preoccupy students during their encounter with art history at BNU. Art history is an intellectually challenging and constantly evolving field of academic enquiry. Certain questions on the nature of art and culture are unanswerable; they remain rhetorical. And yet, they are immensely useful in provoking complacency and predictability. Throughout history, humanists, philosophers, artists and writers have formulated such important questions.

The Art History programme at BNU provides students with the opportunity to explore the visual arts in different time spans, contexts and cultures. The practice of art today is indispensable from art theory. We believe that successful young artists and designers need to be erudite and well informed. Through a deeper understanding of the historic precedents of their field, students are able to critique their own practice. Lectures and seminars in the foundation programme lay the basis for differentiated ways of approaching, analyzing and interpreting art. During the second and subsequent years, fine art, and design students continue to study art theory at a more advanced level in a variety of compulsory and elective courses. The programme also offers excursions and field trips in Lahore and elsewhere in Pakistan, so that works of art can be experienced and discussed at first hand.