In 1965, upon the initiative of the Academic Council of the Tashkent Theatre and Art Institute, the field of art studies and the Department of “History and Theory of Fine Arts” were established. In 2020, in accordance with the decision of the Institute’s Academic Council, the department was renamed the “Department of Art History and Theory.”

Today, the department functions as a leading academic and research center that provides theoretical knowledge in the fields of fine and applied arts, architecture, and design. The department offers in-depth study of world and national art history, the evolution of artistic processes, styles and movements, aesthetic theories, and issues of art analysis.

The main objective of the department is to develop students’ deep analytical thinking in the field of art and to train competitive art specialists who are capable of understanding the patterns of development of national and world art and are equipped with modern academic approaches.

Currently, the department provides training at both bachelor’s and master’s levels. The educational process is organized on the basis of a credit-modular system. The department offers the following core subjects: art of the ancient world, 20th–21st century European and Asian art, history of Eastern art, history of Uzbek art, history of decorative and applied arts, history of Uzbek folk applied arts, general history of fine arts, history and theory of art criticism, Eastern book art and miniature painting, theatre, cinema and music, fundamentals of art studies, fundamentals of research, fundamentals of art journalism, speech and rhetoric, international cultural relations, history of Central Asian fine and applied arts, art theory, and research methodology.