When you walk into the Gorlaeus Building, you will notice it immediately; the artwork 'The Cloud' hangs prominently in the hall and cannot be missed. Artist Jos Agasi designed it especially for this location. ‘Intuition, imagination and creativity. Scientists and artists have more in common than they…

Art of Captivity / Arte del Cautiverio tells a compelling story about Central America's drug war through a series of rich photographs. The book, which is entirely bilingual in English and Spanish, focuses on Guatemala, which has become the primary point of transit for cocaine produced in the Andes and…

Investigation of 1.) The whereabouts of the epistemological dissonances in art criticisms on Post-war contemporary art from Japan between two different language realms, in this case in English and Japanese; and 2.) What the dissonances disclose, disturb, and contribute in the process of the establishment…

The Leiden Academic Course Center offers a large variety of visual art courses. Our courses are offered for beginners as wel as more advanced students. In the lessons everybody will be guided according to their experience. All the art supplies used during the classes are included in the price of the…

Knowledge and culture subproject 3:

The Leiden Lectures in Media | Art | Politics (MAP) is a series of talks organized by Pepita Hesselberth and Yasco Horsman. Speakers from various academic backgrounds and in different stages of their careers reflect on diverging ways in which technological and social changes challenge and transform…

Become an indispensable contributor to the wellbeing of our societies in culture, policies and economies!

Are you thinking about studying Arts and Culture: Art History and Museum Studies? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

Troughout the ages, art has always had a large impact, from the first cave drawings until modern art forms. In the Bachelor's programme Art History at Leiden University you will not just get to know art from the Netherlands and Europe, but also from North-America, Asia and Africa. Study art from the…

The master’s programme in Arts and Culture at Leiden University is uniquely positioned at the intersection of Art History and Museum Studies. Informed by leading interdisciplinary research, this degree provides you with a strong academic foundation for a variety of careers in museums, galleries and…

The MA Arts and Culture at Leiden University offers two specialisations: Art History and Museum Studies.

Spirit priests and ancestor cults in new guinea's far west

Inaugural lecture, delivered upon acceptance of the Chair in Theory of Research in the Arts, at the Faculty of Humanities, Leiden University, on 10 February 2017, by Professor H.A. (Henk) Borgdorff.

Are you thinking about studying Arts, Literature and Media? Learn more and watch the introduction video.

ARC (art_research_convergence) is an outreach initiative of Leiden University Academy of Creative and Performing Arts, and the University of the Arts The Hague, for the active communication of artistic research.

This dissertation focuses on a new field of artistic research in which a visual artist takes on the role of researcher. The main research question is whether performance art integrated in an ecumenical service, combined with artistic directions from the artist, can enhance the religious experience of…

Visit an exhibition, a concert or learn to paint.

Historicising Art and Literature is one of the six research themes of the LUCAS Modern and Contemporary cluster.

The Secret Life of Art Works. Exploring the Boundaries between Art and Life is the first collection of essays to present case studies from the visual arts, architecture, sculpture and numismatics, and to engage critically with theoretical perspectives from art history, psychology, aesthetics and ant…

Bernini and Pallavicino, the artist and the Jesuit cardinal, are closely related figures at the papal courts of Urban VIII and Alexander VII, at which Bernini was the principal artist. The analysis of Pallavicino's writings offers a new perspective on Bernini's art and artistry and allow us to understand…

Visual art today is strongly interlinked with today’s society, a connection which is reinforced and deepened by social and other media. In Arts, Media and Society, a specialisation of our Art History bachelor's programme, you will explore this relationship and analyse how it reflects and impacts the…

Perhaps you are completely new to the concept of Liberal Arts and Sciences, or perhaps you are familiar with the Liberal Arts colleges of the United States. So, what actually is Liberal Arts & Sciences, and why has it become so popular in the Netherlands in recent years?

Dirk Huyge (Director) & Wouter Claes (Vice-Director)

How an initially valueless object becomes worth hundreds of millions. And vice versa.

Exploring cultural production in Europe, Latin America and Africa, the institute’s research programme focuses on the continuous interconnectedness of the Arts and Society in both the textual culture of literature, learning and public debate and the visual culture of art, architecture, film, photography…

This publication aims at the analysis of the performance of a corpus of Fongbe stories that I collected in three villages in the south of Benin in 1976 and 1977. The corpus consists of 37 stories (57.000 words). The stories aim at children’s education.

In what ways can visual art play a vital role in countering the discriminating stigma experienced by transgender communities?

The online exhibition 'Art of Captivity' corresponds with the publication of anthropologists Kevin Lewis O'Neill and Benjamin Fogarty-Art Valenzuela's book the Art ofCaptivity (University of Toronto Press 2020).

The Platform for Arts Research in Collaboration (PARC) is a new online and offline platform for researchers working in and beyond the fields of Composition, Music, Art and Design to exchange knowledge, experiences and public events, stimulate collaboration and increase the visibility of their research…

How would you like to combine your studies at Leiden University with high-level education in the arts? The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts will give you a unique opportunity to develop your academic and artistic talents.

At ACPA, the collaboration between Leiden University and the University of the Arts The Hague, artistry and academia meet at the highest level.

Study information, Online Experience

The purpose of LENS is to foster, coordinate and support research of visual media of analog and digital photography, film, and video, and the visual arts.

This interdisciplinary research master offers the best of three worlds (arts, literature and media) through a program of well-designed courses, with ample space for specialization. It combines theoretically grounded methods and approaches with period-specific training that focuses either on the medieval…

The arts and science: for years, they were seen as opposite extremes. One calls on emotion and the other on reason. The Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA) proves that nothing could be further from the truth. ACPA is where the knowledge and expertise of Leiden University and the University…

Leiden University Centre for the Arts in Society (LUCAS) is dedicated to ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research dealing with the relations between culture and society.

Practicum Artium (PA) is a programme specially developed for students of Leiden University with a talent for visual arts and an interest in artistic research. Art and research feed on one another and are intertwined in many ways. In Practicum Artium, you will explore artistic practices and methods,…

On 14 September 2021, Bram van der Sar defended his thesis 'Fiscale geheimhoudingsplicht: art. 67 AWR ontrafeld'. The doctoral research was supervised by Prof. J.P. Boer and Prof. A.O. Lubbers.

A contextual approach to anthropomorphic figurines in the Pavlovian (Central Europe, 29-24 kyr BP) (2001)

The center studies the many ways in which issues of law and justice are dealt with in art and literature with a focus on liminal issues and cases. These are issues and cases where law comes to the limits of what it is capable of dealing with and art and literature explore the implications of what is…

This dissertation is a study of North Korean art as a site where politics, history, and culture meet.

This research intends to study the why, what, how and the possible outcome of internationalisation in higher education institutions of fine art and design.

'Politics of Withdrawal' considers the significance of practices and theories of withdrawal for radical thinking today.