It’s now possible to get inside the $50 billion art world with Sotheby’s Institute of Art Online. You can study from anywhere in the world. All you need is a computer and  you can study everything from understanding trends in the art market to using art as an alternative investment to the history of museums and more. It is all at your fingertips, taught by the Institute’s leading faculty as well as some of the world’s most important experts in the art world, from bankers to  historians to gallerists to international art lawyers.

With Sotheby’s Institute Online you can get inside the art world, learn about the art market and the vibrant international art scene from any computer anywhere. You’ll gain unparalleled access to Sotheby’s Institute of Art faculty and experts as well as a network provided by the online learning system. You’ll attend lectures, interact with faculty and other students and participate in discussions all via computer. A free, fully-online student orientation begins before each session. In addition, you’ll also have access to telephone technical support from noon to midnight each day.

Rembrandt's Night Watch

Van Gogh's Sunflowers

Following this, are more specific genres of writing for students to explore – gallery notices for works on the wall and more general, longer exhibition introductions as well as brief catalogue descriptions of the artworks. Discussions centre around the best ways to balance facts for the visitors without being intrusively instructive or “lecturey”…

Other opportunities are for journalistic exercises, learning to be a reviewer for a national paper, or preparing and writing an academic paper, or a fully-fledged essay for an exhibition catalogue (all these are optional). So, how many yellow can you discern in the Van Gogh sunflowers?

James Malpas

Our online courses launch at the end of March, and we’re already getting some previews. Here’s one from Clare Solery writing for the MuseumStrategy blog.

And in other news close to home, Students from Sotheby’s Institute of Art MA programs now have the opportunity to study Interior Design at New York’s prestigious New York School of Interior Design as part of a new collaborative degree program. Read about it HERE.