seyedas
19 hrs ago
Graduate / Motivation letter for the MA in Art History in Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy [NEW]
Dear Members of the Admissions Committee,
My name is Elizaveta, and I am applying for the MA in Art History in Rome from Late Antiquity to the Present (LM-89) at Università di Roma "Tor Vergata".
I am currently completing my Bachelor's degree in Media and Communication Studies at the Higher School of Economics (HSE), St. Petersburg campus, one of Russia's leading research universities. I maintain a GPA of 8.75, ranking among the top-performing students of my cohort. While my degree program is interdisciplinary, my academic trajectory has been consistently and deliberately centered on the study of art history, visual culture, and the historical interpretation of artistic forms.
I consider the MA in Art History in Rome from Late Antiquity to the Present at Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" a direct continuation of my academic development. My primary interest lies in art history as a historical discipline grounded in material evidence, spatial context, and direct engagement with artworks, architecture, and urban environments. In particular, I am interested in how artistic forms operate within systems of power, spatial organization, and cultural memory, and how these relationships can be traced across different historical periods. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I structured my curriculum to acquire a solid art-historical foundation necessary for advanced graduate-level training.
During my studies, I completed more than ten courses directly related to art history and cultural history, including Introduction to European Culture: Key Concepts, Historical Milestones, Visual Images, History of Art and Literature, Art Criticism, Contemporary Art Practices, History of Italy, The Crisis of the Roman Republic (2nd-1st centuries BC), Power and Violence in Eastern and Western Civilizations: Two Historical Paths of Global Development, and The Vesuvian Area as a Meta-Museum of the Ancient World. Together, these courses provided me with a strong grounding in Antiquity, Early Modernity, and modern art, while emphasizing contextual, visual, and historical analysis. They also trained me to approach artworks not as isolated objects, but as elements of broader spatial, political, and cultural systems.
Alongside my formal coursework, I have consistently pursued independent academic study in art history. This included working with foundational texts by E. H. Gombrich, Erwin Panofsky, Heinrich Wölfflin, A. F. Losev, A. Ippolitov, and other scholars, attending open lecture series on art history offered by the Higher School of Economics, and engaging with international academic resources such as Yale University's lecture courses on the history of painting. This independent work allowed me to deepen my understanding of art-historical methodology and to situate individual artworks within broader historical and theoretical frameworks.
My preparation in Roman history and archaeology was particularly shaped by courses taught by Vyacheslav G. Telminov, Associate Professor at the Institute for Classical East and Antiquity, HSE. His research on Roman villas, architectural perspective, and the Vesuvian region-supported by international grants including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation-introduced me to object-based and spatial approaches to Roman visual culture and strengthened my interest in studying art and architecture in situ. This experience taught me to read architecture and decoration as interconnected visual systems shaped by movement, visibility, and social hierarchy.
My research experience reflects this orientation. My first course paper examined performative practices as visual phenomena within their historical and cultural contexts. My second course paper, Curatorial Practices in the Digital Environment: Representing Vulnerable Experience through an Online Exhibition on Motherhood, focused on exhibition-making as a form of historical interpretation and was presented at an academic conference. I am currently completing my Bachelor's thesis entitled Critique of Media Reality in Cinema: The Case of Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, in which cinema is approached as a visual and cultural form closely connected to broader art-historical questions of modernity, perception, and spatial experience within the Italian context.
In parallel with my academic work, I have gained practical experience within major museum institutions, including the Theatre and Music Museum, the Stroganov Palace (State Russian Museum), and the State Hermitage Lecture Hall. This experience allowed me to observe how art-historical research is translated into curatorial narratives and exhibition formats within large classical museums. I was also selected through a competitive process to join the Hermitage student program "Vekhi," led by Svetlana Borisovna Esman, a distinguished art historian whose scholarly work has made a significant contribution to the development of the State Hermitage Museum. The program, conducted directly within museum collections, strengthened my ability to analyze artworks through object-centered study and to understand exhibition-making as a form of scholarly interpretation rather than mere display.
I am particularly drawn to the MA program at Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" because of its rigorous art-historical methodology and its demand for sustained, critical engagement with artworks and sites in their original contexts. Studying art history in Rome represents for me not only an opportunity, but also an intellectual challenge that requires methodological precision and historical responsibility. My long-term goal is to pursue a career as a curator within major classical museums while continuing academic research in art history, and I see the Tor Vergata program as an essential foundation for this path.
The program's emphasis on object-based and field-based learning, combined with its close connection to museums, collections, and archaeological sites, corresponds precisely to my academic interests and professional aspirations. I am especially interested in developing a historically grounded curatorial approach based on scholarly research, close analysis of original works, and an understanding of exhibition-making as a form of knowledge production.
I am also deeply impressed by the scale of opportunities offered by Tor Vergata, both academic and extra-academic. The university's intellectual environment, research-oriented culture, and engagement with cultural institutions create a context in which rigorous scholarship and professional development are closely interconnected. I would strongly value the opportunity not only to study within this program, but to become an active member of the Tor Vergata academic community and to contribute to its scholarly and cultural life through research-driven curatorial and academic work.
Thank you for considering my application.
Sincerely,
Elizaveta
Dear Members of the Admissions Committee,
My name is Elizaveta, and I am applying for the MA in Art History in Rome from Late Antiquity to the Present (LM-89) at Università di Roma "Tor Vergata".
I am currently completing my Bachelor's degree in Media and Communication Studies at the Higher School of Economics (HSE), St. Petersburg campus, one of Russia's leading research universities. I maintain a GPA of 8.75, ranking among the top-performing students of my cohort. While my degree program is interdisciplinary, my academic trajectory has been consistently and deliberately centered on the study of art history, visual culture, and the historical interpretation of artistic forms.
I consider the MA in Art History in Rome from Late Antiquity to the Present at Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" a direct continuation of my academic development. My primary interest lies in art history as a historical discipline grounded in material evidence, spatial context, and direct engagement with artworks, architecture, and urban environments. In particular, I am interested in how artistic forms operate within systems of power, spatial organization, and cultural memory, and how these relationships can be traced across different historical periods. Throughout my undergraduate studies, I structured my curriculum to acquire a solid art-historical foundation necessary for advanced graduate-level training.
During my studies, I completed more than ten courses directly related to art history and cultural history, including Introduction to European Culture: Key Concepts, Historical Milestones, Visual Images, History of Art and Literature, Art Criticism, Contemporary Art Practices, History of Italy, The Crisis of the Roman Republic (2nd-1st centuries BC), Power and Violence in Eastern and Western Civilizations: Two Historical Paths of Global Development, and The Vesuvian Area as a Meta-Museum of the Ancient World. Together, these courses provided me with a strong grounding in Antiquity, Early Modernity, and modern art, while emphasizing contextual, visual, and historical analysis. They also trained me to approach artworks not as isolated objects, but as elements of broader spatial, political, and cultural systems.
Alongside my formal coursework, I have consistently pursued independent academic study in art history. This included working with foundational texts by E. H. Gombrich, Erwin Panofsky, Heinrich Wölfflin, A. F. Losev, A. Ippolitov, and other scholars, attending open lecture series on art history offered by the Higher School of Economics, and engaging with international academic resources such as Yale University's lecture courses on the history of painting. This independent work allowed me to deepen my understanding of art-historical methodology and to situate individual artworks within broader historical and theoretical frameworks.
My preparation in Roman history and archaeology was particularly shaped by courses taught by Vyacheslav G. Telminov, Associate Professor at the Institute for Classical East and Antiquity, HSE. His research on Roman villas, architectural perspective, and the Vesuvian region-supported by international grants including the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation-introduced me to object-based and spatial approaches to Roman visual culture and strengthened my interest in studying art and architecture in situ. This experience taught me to read architecture and decoration as interconnected visual systems shaped by movement, visibility, and social hierarchy.
My research experience reflects this orientation. My first course paper examined performative practices as visual phenomena within their historical and cultural contexts. My second course paper, Curatorial Practices in the Digital Environment: Representing Vulnerable Experience through an Online Exhibition on Motherhood, focused on exhibition-making as a form of historical interpretation and was presented at an academic conference. I am currently completing my Bachelor's thesis entitled Critique of Media Reality in Cinema: The Case of Federico Fellini and Michelangelo Antonioni, in which cinema is approached as a visual and cultural form closely connected to broader art-historical questions of modernity, perception, and spatial experience within the Italian context.
In parallel with my academic work, I have gained practical experience within major museum institutions, including the Theatre and Music Museum, the Stroganov Palace (State Russian Museum), and the State Hermitage Lecture Hall. This experience allowed me to observe how art-historical research is translated into curatorial narratives and exhibition formats within large classical museums. I was also selected through a competitive process to join the Hermitage student program "Vekhi," led by Svetlana Borisovna Esman, a distinguished art historian whose scholarly work has made a significant contribution to the development of the State Hermitage Museum. The program, conducted directly within museum collections, strengthened my ability to analyze artworks through object-centered study and to understand exhibition-making as a form of scholarly interpretation rather than mere display.
I am particularly drawn to the MA program at Università di Roma "Tor Vergata" because of its rigorous art-historical methodology and its demand for sustained, critical engagement with artworks and sites in their original contexts. Studying art history in Rome represents for me not only an opportunity, but also an intellectual challenge that requires methodological precision and historical responsibility. My long-term goal is to pursue a career as a curator within major classical museums while continuing academic research in art history, and I see the Tor Vergata program as an essential foundation for this path.
The program's emphasis on object-based and field-based learning, combined with its close connection to museums, collections, and archaeological sites, corresponds precisely to my academic interests and professional aspirations. I am especially interested in developing a historically grounded curatorial approach based on scholarly research, close analysis of original works, and an understanding of exhibition-making as a form of knowledge production.
I am also deeply impressed by the scale of opportunities offered by Tor Vergata, both academic and extra-academic. The university's intellectual environment, research-oriented culture, and engagement with cultural institutions create a context in which rigorous scholarship and professional development are closely interconnected. I would strongly value the opportunity not only to study within this program, but to become an active member of the Tor Vergata academic community and to contribute to its scholarly and cultural life through research-driven curatorial and academic work.
Thank you for considering my application.
Sincerely,
Elizaveta
