The main focus in the education program in ‘Art Studies and Fine Arts’ (code 05.05.04) is to prepare competent researchers in the field of history and theory of art, processes in modern art (their documentation, organization and theoretical evaluation), artistic practice (its wide diapason includes all forms of manifestation – from the organization of exhibitions and other public art activities – to maintenance and presentation of museum expositions in line with the recent world tendencies in museum science); experts in the field of visual culture – Bulgarian and foreign and also in line with the modern scientific, theoretical and research tendencies.
The Institute of Art Studies has great experience in preparing doctorantes in ‘Art Studies and Fine Arts’. Besides the great number of scientists that have received their degree here and later have become important names in the academic circles during the past decades (till 1989), during the period 1989-1998 ten young scientists have successfully graduated and received their degrees, while in the last five-year period (2001-2005) some 20 young scientists have been educated – out of them 8 have already received their degree and 11 are soon to graduate. Their research work covers the whole scope of academic problematic connected with art – from its early history (Late Antiquity, Roman, Early Byzantine and Post-Byzantine, dated 15th – 18th century), covering the problems of 20th century modernism in the context of European and world culture and the changes in visual language in the postmodernism (the language of visual art in Bulgaria from the middle of the 20th century till the first years of the 21st century) and reaching up to questions related to teaching art and the communication, education and aesthetic parameters of museum practice.
The doctorantes in ‘Art Studies and Fine Arts’ have at the opportunity to communicate with academic art circles. Each doctorante has an individual tuition system under the academic guidance of a specialist from the institute and the active assistance of the whole academic team of the department ‘Art Studies and Fine Arts’.
