ARTHIST115 Global Art Histories
The Complete Exam Bible · S2 2026ARTHIST115 Overview
- University of Auckland
- Semester 2, 2026
- Level 1 course
- 15 point course
- Online final examination
ARTHIST115 Global Art Histories is a Level 1, 15-point University of Auckland survey of art and visual culture from the early modern period to the contemporary.
- Assessed by A Week 6 image test, two tutorial reflections, a three-example essay and an online final examination.
- Central skill Turn subject, form and context into a claim about how an image displays or contests authority.
- How to revise Pair works from different weeks and practise identifying, analysing and comparing them at speed.
How ARTHIST115 is assessed
| Component | Weight | Format |
|---|---|---|
| Test | 20% | Week 6 online timed test in Canvas, 25 August 2026: 1½ hours to identify and analyse two of six images in at least 600 words each |
| Reflection 1 | 10% | 500 words (550 maximum) on tutorial visits, the University art collection or tutorial discussion; due 7 August 2026 |
| Reflection 2 | 10% | 500 words (550 maximum) on tutorial experiences; due 18 September 2026 |
| Essay | 30% | 1,800 to 1,850 words including references and bibliography, three examples, Chicago footnotes; due 9 October 2026 (Week 10) |
| Final Exam | 30% | One online examination; questions, length and permitted materials are advised on Canvas |
Weights come from the University's Semester 2, 2026 assessments page for the course, which lists Test 20%, two Reflections at 10% each, Essay 30% and Final Exam 30%. The five weights total 100%. The essay assignment page heading still shows a May date from an earlier offering; its due date of 9 October 2026 matches the assessments page. The course pages do not name a separate hurdle for any task, so check Canvas for any later pass requirement.
Current ARTHIST115 dates
| Date | Item | Control |
|---|---|---|
| 7 August 2026 at 23:59 | Reflection 1 | Canvas assignment due date. |
| 25 August 2026 | Online test | Week 6; no class that day so the test can be sat in class time. |
| 18 September 2026 at 23:59 | Reflection 2 | Canvas assignment due date. |
| 9 October 2026 at 23:59 | Essay | Week 10 Canvas due date. |
Dates follow the Semester 2, 2026 assessments page and Canvas assignment pages. Confirm exact deadlines and submission settings in the live LMS.
What ARTHIST115 covers
Move from a method of looking through Māori and Pacific carving, adornment and taonga, Oceania, Tudor and Chinese court portraiture and contemporary Chinese, Māori and Pacific art, then finish with essay method and image-response practice.
Visual Analysis in Art History
Subject, form and context; the to-what-effect question; describing versus analysing; slow looking across culturesVisual analysis is the method underneath every ARTHIST115 task, and the Week 3 tutorial reduces it to three headings. Subject records what is depicted and what kind of object it is.
- Subject: what is depicted and what kind of object it is
- Form: composition, space, line, colour, figure, scale and perspective
- Context: meaning, maker, place, purpose and function
- To what effect: turning observations into a claim
- Description versus analysis in the essay guide
- Slow looking and cross-cultural comparison of portraits
Māori and Pacific Carving and Sculpture
Tangaroa and staff gods from the Cook Islands, Hawaiian temple images, the Uawa poupou, Mead's continuum and the whare whakairo as ancestral bodyThe Week 1 lecture asks how power and authority are represented through the body, how body imagery connects with carving, and how materials enhance a person's mana. Carving answers on several scales.
- Questions of rank, body and material in the opening lecture
- Tangaroa, staff gods and other Eastern Polynesian god images
- Deities of Hawaiian art making and the god Ku
- The whare whakairo as an ancestor's body
- The Uawa poupou and the chiefly woman Hinematioro
- Mead's continuum from the Seeds to the Turning
Tā Moko and Tatau
Moko as chiselled relief, moko kauae and its revival, tatau, lei niho palaoa and nifo koula as adornment of rank and memoryWeek 2 turns from carved wood to the adorned body. Moko is the chiselling of skin and insertion of pigment, related to tatau, the Pacific practice of puncturing and colouring the flesh.
- Moko as chiselled relief and tatau as punctured colour
- Customary placement of moko for men and for women
- Decline in the nineteenth century and the twentieth-century record
- Moko kauae taken by Tainui women in 2007
- Whale ivory, greenstone and huia feathers as status materials
- Lei niho palaoa and nifo koula as inherited adornment
Taonga, Mana and Tapu
Tapsell's whakapapa, mana, tapu and kōrero; karakia and mauri; Titore's exchanges with William IV; taonga in museums abroadPaul Tapsell's essay on the cloak Te Kahumamae o Pareraututu explains taonga from a Te Arawa perspective rather than through outside observers.
- Why property is an inadequate translation of taonga
- Whakapapa from Te Kore to Te Ao Mārama
- Mana, tapu and kōrero as elements within a taonga
- Karakia, mauri and kaitiakitanga
- Titore, HMS Buffalo and the armour of 1835
- Photograms of taonga in a Cambridge museum
Our Sea of Islands: Hau'ofa and Oceania
Islands in a far sea versus a sea of islands, belittlement and world enlargement, Pacific Islands versus OceaniaEpeli Hau'ofa's 1994 essay Our Sea of Islands rejects the view that Pacific countries are too small, poor and isolated to be autonomous.
- Hau'ofa's argument against belittlement
- Smallness as a matter of what is counted
- Islands in a far sea versus a sea of islands
- Colonial boundaries and the contraction of Oceania
- World enlargement, migration and reciprocity
- Applying the reading to an artwork
Tudor Portraits and Power
Holbein's Henry VIII, the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I, Lely's Windsor Beauties and the equestrian portrait across courtsThe Week 3 lectures, titled Beauty and Power, focus on portraiture at the Tudor court, and the tutorial that week applies visual analysis to three portraits.
- Beauty and power at the Tudor court
- Pose, scale, clothing and gaze in Holbein's Henry VIII
- Body, dress and position in the Ditchley portrait
- Lely's Windsor Beauties and aristocratic femininity
- The equestrian ruler from Marcus Aurelius to Qianlong
- Comparing English and Mughal court images
Tang Court Art and Landscape
Qin to Tang contexts, the Silk Roads, sancai tomb figures, meirenhua court painting, blue-green and ink landscape, Longmen and Empress WuThe first Week 4 lecture frames Chinese art through four contexts: dynasties, the Silk Roads, religious and philosophical traditions, and court life.
- Qin unification and the terracotta army
- The Silk Roads as exchange of goods and ideas
- Sancai tomb figures and Sogdian traders
- Meirenhua court painting of ideal women
- Blue-green and monochrome ink landscape
- Confucianism, Daoism and the meaning of landscape
Qing Imperial Portraiture
Ancestor portraits and filial piety, Ming imperial likeness, the Manchu Qing, Castiglione's hybrid style, shengrong and Qianlong's costume portraitsThe second Week 4 lecture traces imperial portraiture through dynastic stability, ancestor worship and filial piety, religion and cosmopolitanism.
- Ancestor worship, filial piety and memorialisation
- Ming imperial portraits and Ming export wares
- Qing ancestor portraits for family worship
- The shengrong as sacred likeness
- Castiglione's hybrid European and Chinese style
- Qianlong's costume portraits and the equestrian image
Contemporary Chinese Art: Forever Tomorrow
Xu Zhen, Ai Weiwei, Pu Yingwei, Shi Xinning, Song Dong and Zhang Huan on heritage, value, censorship and futilityWeek 5 opens the contemporary theme with a lecture on contemporary Chinese art and a tutorial visit to Forever Tomorrow at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki. The works answer the imperial images of Week 4 by questioning heritage, value and authority.
- Forever Tomorrow at Auckland Art Gallery
- Plunder and fusion in Xu Zhen's Eternity
- Destruction as meaning in Ai Weiwei's urn
- Economic and political history in painting
- Apartment art and impermanence in Song Dong
- Futility in Zhang Huan's performances
Contemporary Māori and Pacific Art
Ane Tonga's Grills, Lisa Reihana's Māramatanga, Fiona Pardington's life-cast portraits and Greg Semu's self-portrait with pe'aThe course's first tutorial tours the University of Auckland art collection, a living collection of around 2,000 works with about 90 per cent on display.
- The University collection as a living collection
- Learning outcomes on Māori and Pacific artists
- Ane Tonga's Grills and indigenised gold teeth
- Lisa Reihana's Māramatanga and digital ancestors
- Fiona Pardington and the colonial life casts
- Planning a three-work essay on one artist
Writing the Art History Essay
Choosing among four question families, the three-example structure, introduction and conclusion, Chicago footnotes, bibliography and image platesThe essay is worth 30 per cent and must run from 1,800 to 1,850 words, with references and bibliography included in the count.
- The four 2026 essay question families
- Reading the instruction word in a question
- The six steps of the essay guide
- Introduction, body and conclusion
- Chicago footnotes and the shortened note
- Bibliography, image plates and the grade bands
Its prescription places works from Māori and Pacific cultures alongside Indian, Asian, Middle Eastern, European and American traditions, and its comparative approach trains you to recognise how power manipulates vision, concepts and materials, and how artists have challenged that power.
The Semester II 2026 schedule opens with representations of authority and status: Māori and Pacific carving, body adornment through tā moko and tatau, portraiture at the Tudor court, and the Tang and Qing courts of China, before a Week 5 visit to the Forever Tomorrow exhibition of contemporary Chinese art.
After the break the lectures continue through Japan, the Mughal dynasty and the British Raj, modernisms in India, Europe, the United States and Aotearoa, mana wāhine and feminism, and contemporary Māori and Pacific art.
Tutorials build the skills those lectures assume: a tour of the University's own art collection, a structured method of visual analysis, readings by Paul Tapsell on taonga and Epeli Hau'ofa on Oceania, and sessions on structuring essays. Assessment rewards using works rather than reciting them.
The Week 6 test asked for two image responses of at least 600 words each, the reflections draw on tutorial visits and discussions, and the essay asks for an argument built on three examples with Chicago footnotes. This guide follows that logic.
Each chapter maps one relationship between image and authority, models a paragraph at exam density, and drills the comparison and identification habits the online final examination will reward.
Worked example · free
Analyse a Qing emperor's equestrian portrait as an image of authority
- 1Identify it fully: Castiglione, known at court as Lang Shining, Qianlong Emperor in Ceremonial Armour on Horseback, ink and colour on silk, with the date as your lecture gives it.
- 1Describe the subject: the emperor mounted and armoured, a ruler shown as military commander.
- 1Analyse the form: European spatial perspective joined to Chinese silk painting, at a scale over three metres high.
- 1Place it in context: a Manchu dynasty, about 2 percent of the population, using images to reinforce its rule.
- 1Compare and conclude: the pose answers European equestrian portraits such as Van Dyck's Charles I, presenting Qianlong as a ruler of world standing.
Key terms
- Visual analysis
- A method of reading an artwork through its subject, its form and its context in order to explain the effect it produces.
- Form
- The arrangement of visual elements in a work, including composition, space, line, colour, figure, scale and perspective.
- Mana
- Authority, power and prestige, understood as energy from the gods transmitted through ancestors to people and their treasures.
- Tapu
- A state of sacredness or restriction that protects the mana of a person or taonga and is balanced by noa.
- Taonga
- A treasured possession of a kin group, material or non-material, carrying genealogy, mana, tapu and kōrero.
- Whakapapa
- Genealogy that layers descendants under common ancestors and links people with gods and all living things.
- Kōrero
- Orally transmitted knowledge, oratory and the histories attached to a taonga, which keep its genealogical position recognised.
- Whare whakairo
- A carved meeting house conceived as the body of a named ancestor, from the koruru head to the poho belly.
- Moko kauae
- The Māori women's chin moko, revived in recent decades as a mark of remembrance, identity and pride.
- Tatau
- The Pacific practice of puncturing and colouring the skin, from which the English word tattoo derives.
- Shengrong
- The formal Qing imperial portrait type, a frontal and impassive sacred likeness depicting dynastic continuity.
- Shan shui
- Mountain and water painting, the Chinese landscape tradition built on linear brushwork and ink washes.
- Chicago footnotes
- The notes and bibliography referencing system the course requires, with citations in footnotes and an alphabetised bibliography.
ARTHIST115 FAQ
How is Global Art Histories assessed in 2026?
Five tasks make up the grade. The Week 6 online test is worth 20 percent, two tutorial reflections are worth 10 percent each, the essay is worth 30 percent and an online final examination carries the remaining 30 percent. Coursework therefore accounts for 70 percent before the examination period begins, so the exam decides a large but not a majority share.
What is the final exam format?
The assessments page confirms one online examination worth 30 percent,. Questions, length and permitted materials are posted on Canvas, so check there instead of assuming the Week 6 test structure repeats. The image-response practice in this guide trains identification and analysis, the skills any format will draw on.
Is Global Art Histories a hard course?
The published facts point to breadth and speed rather than technical difficulty. Lectures move from Aotearoa and the Pacific through China, Japan, India, England, Europe and the United States, and the Week 6 test asked for 600 words on each of two images in about half an hour apiece. Students who revise works in comparative pairs find the volume far easier to manage.
How should I write an image response?
Identify the work first: artist or culture, title, date, medium and place. Then give a brief visual analysis through subject, form and context, and discuss the image against a course theme such as power and authority, mana and tapu, continuum, gender or social context. Finish each paragraph on the effect the visual choices produce, not on a description.
What essay questions does the course set?
The 2026 essay offered four question families, each built on three examples: the development or continuum of an art form in one place, how an art form demonstrates rank and authority, the development of modernism in a named place, and three works by one artist exploring a theme such as migration, mana wāhine or Indigenous knowledge systems.
Which referencing style does the course require?
Written assignments use the Chicago notes and bibliography system: citations in numbered footnotes placed after punctuation, and an alphabetised bibliography at the end. The essay guide asks for titles of artworks in italics with date and location, image plates on separate pages, and five to eight sources consulted, and the word limit includes notes and bibliography.
Can I use AI tools for Global Art Histories coursework?
No. The coursework information says tools or software that paraphrase, synthesise or analyse information may not be used when completing ARTHIST115 coursework, naming generative chatbots and paraphrasing tools as examples. The reason given is that the course must assess your own synthesis and analysis. Use study aids for revision only, and write every submitted sentence yourself.
Questions students ask in each ARTHIST115 chapter
- What is the difference between describing and analysing an artwork?
- Describing records what is visible. Analysing explains why a visible feature matters: how the composition, scale or material shapes a viewer's response and what that response tells you about the work's purpose. The essay guide states plainly that you should not describe works without analysing them. Chapter 01 · Visual Analysis in Art History
- What does Mead's continuum of Māori art divide history into?
- It names four periods: Ngā Kākano, the Seeds, from 900; Te Tipunga, the Growth, from 1200; Te Puāwaitanga, the Flowering, from 1500; and Te Huringa, the Turning, from 1800 to the present. The framework comes from Mead's 1984 essay in the Te Māori catalogue and presents change as a living continuum rather than decline. Chapter 02 · Māori and Pacific Carving and Sculpture
- Why did moko decline in the nineteenth century?
- Christian missionaries and then settlers condemned moko as ungodly and pagan and encouraged its end. By the 1860s few tohunga tā moko remained, and they worked mainly in regions of active resistance. Interviews in the late 1960s suggest that women's moko kauae declined because practitioners were scarce, not because women stopped wanting it. Chapter 03 · Tā Moko and Tatau
- What are the three elements of a taonga in Tapsell's essay?
- Mana, tapu and kōrero. Mana is authority transmitted through ancestors; tapu protects it from contact with the everyday; kōrero is the genealogical history attached to the item. Tapsell treats kōrero as the most important, because without it descendants can no longer recognise where the taonga sits in their whakapapa. Chapter 04 · Taonga, Mana and Tapu
- What is the main argument of Our Sea of Islands?
- Hau'ofa argues that describing Pacific countries as too small, poor and isolated reflects a narrow, land-based view introduced by Europeans. Seen as a sea of islands, Oceania is vast and connected, and ordinary Islanders continue to enlarge it through migration and reciprocity. He calls the outsider view belittlement and warns that, internalised, it breeds fatalism. Chapter 05 · Our Sea of Islands: Hau'ofa and Oceania
- Which Tudor portraits does the Week 3 tutorial analyse?
- Holbein the Younger's Henry VIII from the Whitehall Mural cartoon of about 1536 to 1537, the Ditchley portrait of Elizabeth I by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, and Peter Lely's Frances Stewart, Duchess of Richmond, painted before 1662. Each comes with a question about how the figure, dress and position construct power or femininity. Chapter 06 · Tudor Portraits and Power
- What are the two styles of Tang landscape painting?
- The lecture names blue-green landscape, developed by court painters, and monochrome ink, associated with the poet and painter Wang Wei, who added textured strokes and ink washes. The two became more distinct in the Song dynasty, when monumental landscapes such as Wang Ximeng's 11.9-metre scroll of 1113 were painted. Chapter 07 · Tang Court Art and Landscape
- Who was Giuseppe Castiglione?
- An Italian Jesuit priest who became court painter to the Qing emperors, known in China as Lang Shining. He developed a hybrid style that combined European spatial perspective with Chinese art forms and subjects. His works in the lecture include Assembled Blessings of 1723 and portraits of the Qianlong Emperor in armour and as Manjushri. Chapter 08 · Qing Imperial Portraiture
- What is Forever Tomorrow?
- It is the exhibition of contemporary Chinese art at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki that ARTHIST115 students visited in the Week 5 tutorial. Works discussed include Xu Zhen's Eternity and "Hello", Ai Weiwei's Dropping a Han Dynasty Urn, Pu Yingwei's China Capital 1978, Shi Xinning's Duchamp painting and performances by Song Dong and Zhang Huan. Chapter 09 · Contemporary Chinese Art: Forever Tomorrow
- Why does the course begin with a tour of the University art collection?
- The collection is a living one, used by students and researchers, with around 2,000 works and about 90 per cent on display. The tour introduces works that return later in the course, such as pieces by Ane Tonga, Lisa Reihana and Fiona Pardington, and gives material for the tutorial reflections. Chapter 10 · Contemporary Māori and Pacific Art
- How long is the Global Art Histories essay?
- A minimum of 1,800 words and a maximum of 1,850, and the word count includes your references and bibliography. The general essay guide mentions a 10 per cent margin, but the 2026 assignment sets its own limits, so plan to the assignment. Leave room in the count for footnotes, which add up quickly in a well-referenced essay. Chapter 11 · Writing the Art History Essay
How to study for the exam
Revise in pairs, not lists. For every chapter choose two works from different places, such as the Uawa poupou and Holbein's Henry VIII, or the Qianlong equestrian portrait and a Tang tomb figure, and write a one-paragraph comparison of how each makes authority visible.
Make an identification card for each key work with artist or culture, title, date, medium and current location, because an image response loses its first marks when identification is vague. Run the subject, form and context route aloud while looking at the image, and end every practice paragraph on an effect.
Learn the Māori terms as the readings define them: mana, tapu, taonga, whakapapa, kōrero, noa and mauri do different jobs, and a precise definition carries an argument further than a general appeal to culture. In the last week, time yourself. Write 600 words on an unseen image in thirty minutes, then mark it against the essay guide's grade descriptors for argument, evidence and expression.
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