8 Arts MA Degree Programs in Netherlands

The master's programme in Arts and Culture focuses on culture in the making. Culture can refer to the products of intellectual and artistic creativity, such as scholarly and literary texts or works of art. It also indicates the cultural practices that shape the everyday life of people, and is expressed in their individual tastes and forms of associating with one another.

In the two-year Research Master's degree in Arts and Culture, you can choose between two tracks. The track in Literary and Cultural Studies offers you an advanced study of the arts. You will focus specifically on the role the arts play in processes of cultural change. Also, you will specialize in one of the involved art forms: literature, film, theatre, music or multimedia forms.

Art is inherently public. In this programme, you will study and reflect upon how public arts policy, arts management, arts marketing and education affect the realization of artistic values in society. Art is inherently public. In this programme, you will study and reflect upon how public arts policy, arts management, arts marketing and education affect the realization of artistic values in society.

A unique program in terms of its diverse and interdisciplinary range of subjects, the Arts and Culture master's programme offers you the choice of two specializationsprogramprogram: Art History and Museum Studies. Each explores different themes from a comparative and global perspective and offers a broad range of electives, allowing you to further customize your degree.

The two-year Master's track in Arts, Media and Literary Studies is a specialization within the Research Master's degree in Arts and Culture. Arts, Media and Literary Studies equips students with knowledge and skills to become researchers and experts on the role that the arts, literature and media play in society, now and in the past. The programme offers a rich multi- and interdisciplinary framework within which students can specialize in one of the following disciplines or combinations of disciplines, under close supervision of a highly qualified research faculty:

The interdisciplinary Arts, Cognition and Criticism track focuses on how culture is transmitted, innovated and critiqued through the arts, with course topics such as the arts and reflective imagination; value-negotiation through storytelling; or social and political functions of the arts. Students are trained in methods from the cognitive sciences, hermeneutics, narrative and critical theory, discourse analysis and art sociology. They develop a keen theory-based insight into the role of the arts in cultural dynamics, and hands-on capacities for critical analysis and interpretation of art-works, debates and developments in the arts, in connection to their social background.

The Master programme Arts and Culture provides students with the skills needed to investigate the function of the arts in society. It combines in-depth knowledge in a range of specific disciplines with professional and social engagement as well as critical and creative thinking.

Culture can be understood as a complex cognitive process through which humans articulate and negotiate their individual and collective consciousness, identities, values and understanding of the world. The arts have always played an important part in this process.