Study profile

The Bachelor of Fine Arts at the Royal Academy of Art, The Hague (KABK) aims to align the past of fine art with its present and its future. We embrace history and traditions and root our discourse firmly in the contemporary while researching and imagining the future of fine art as an indispensable contributor to culture, society and ecology.

BA Fine Arts is a four-year study programme that introduces you to artmaking and critical theory ranging from art history to contemporary discourses in art and culture. The Fine Arts programme centres on the enmeshment of theory, research, and practice - emphasizing critical and speculative reflections on art and its role in our societies and future(s). Therefore, you are encouraged to work across disciplines with ongoing practice to experiment, research, reflect, and contextualise your work. With the focused guidance of our tutors and workshop staff (and a range of guests and visiting experts), you develop and push your artmaking through peer reviews, project presentations, critiques, and tutorials.

The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree may be pursued as a full-time, part-time or Double Degree programme, with each mode appealing to different types of students. Please note that the Double Degree and the Part-time programme are not open to exchange students.

Why choose the BA Fine Arts programme at KABK

• This course provides you with the skills, competencies, strategies and confidence needed to shape your future and the future of the art form.
• You will become familiar with a wide range of techniques and technologies relevant to artmaking, such as painting, drawing, video making, sculpting and performing.
• You have an individual choice for the content; the form and contextualisation of your work is paramount.
• As with other study options, the Bachelor of Fine Arts also gives you access to a wide range of courses at Leiden University.
• As a department we have an international, research-oriented approach.
• After completing the first year, you can register for a "double-degree" programme, where you can complete a parallel Art History course at Leiden University in addition to the BA Fine Arts.

Is the BA Fine Arts a study for you?

Do you want to study Fine Arts at KABK? Then the following most likely applies to you:

• You have a self-initiative approach to study.
• You adopt a curious and driven approach to exploring research and experimental techniques.
• You have a desire to share your experience, insights and knowledge within your fellow students.
• You are open to international perspectives.

The Bachelor of Fine Arts degree may be pursued as a full-time, part-time or Double Degree programme, with each mode appealing to different types of students.

Please note that:
- the Double Degree and the part-time programme are not open to exchange students.
- international students cannot apply for the part-time programme, because s residence permit for part-time international students cannot be arranged by the KABK.

The Double Degree trajectory

The Double Degree trajectory allows BA students in Fine Art at the KABK to simultaneously obtain a BA in Art History, through the Arts, Media and Society programme at Leiden University. The programme emerges from the longstanding and fruitful relationship between Leiden University and the Royal Academy of Art under the roof of the Academy of Creative and Performing Arts (ACPA).

The main challenge for students taking the Double Degree trajectory is to balance between an academic approach to art with a sufficient portion of critical distance and the artistic approach with the closest proximity to the own making.

The BA Fine Art programme at the KABK acknowledges the necessity to join artistic skills with intellectual capacities. In fact, artistic skills are understood as the firm merger of making and thinking. The Double Degree programme consequently takes this a step further. It encourages students to develop their skills in the supportive community of art practitioners at the Academy and at the same time to define their reflective capacities in the community of art history students of one of the leading universities.

Acceptance to the Double Degree pathway is only possible after successful completion of the propaedeuse year at the KABK.

To enable students to study in two parallel programmes, a list of exemptions has been agreed upon. At the end of the second semester interested students are invited to apply for the double degree programme with a short assignment, usually a piece of writing reflecting on a current exhibition or art project in the nearer surrounding. This text is the base for a short interview with a team of colleagues from KABK and Leiden University.

We offer more detailed information to interested students during the second semester of the first year.