---
title: "What can you do with an art history degree?"
description: "14 careers art history graduates commonly move into, with BLS median pay, projected growth and entry requirements for each."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors/art-history"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T07:20:09.337Z"
---

# What can you do with an art history degree?

**What the degree involves:** Visual analysis, period and movement study, archival research, and long essays.

This is the hardest list on the site to write honestly, so here is the honest version. The art-world destinations at the top — curating, archives, conservation, appraisal — are real, but they are small, competitive, and most of them expect a graduate degree. The rest of the list is where art history graduates actually go: the research, writing, communications and fundraising roles that a degree in reading objects and arguing from evidence genuinely prepares you for. Both halves are on the same list on purpose.

14 common destinations, ordered most common first rather than highest paid first. 4 of 14 have a master's or a doctoral or professional degree as their BLS typical entry education, and 13 of 14 are projected to grow. A major is a body of study, not a job assignment: these are destinations of people who took the degree, not what the degree entitles anyone to.

| # | Occupation | Median annual wage | Projected change | Openings a year | Typical entry education |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Curator | $63,420 | +7.0% | 1,800 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 2 | Archivist | $64,550 | +3.8% | 1,100 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 3 | Museum Technician and Conservator | $51,440 | +5.4% | 1,900 | Bachelor's |
| 4 | [Librarian](https://nuecareer.com/careers/librarian) | $68,270 | +1.7% | 13,500 | Master's (graduate study) |
| 5 | Fundraiser | $72,550 | +4.3% | 10,200 | Bachelor's |
| 6 | Appraiser of Personal and Business Property | $67,960 | +3.8% | 6,300 | Bachelor's |
| 7 | Set and Exhibit Designer | $75,240 | +2.3% | 2,500 | Bachelor's |
| 8 | Tour Guide and Escort | $38,120 | +8.1% | 13,000 | High school |
| 9 | [High School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/high-school-teacher) | $72,040 | -1.6% | 66,200 | Bachelor's |
| 10 | Writer and Author | $76,910 | +3.6% | 13,400 | Bachelor's |
| 11 | Editor | $77,920 | +0.6% | 9,800 | Bachelor's |
| 12 | [Public Relations Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/public-relations-specialist) | $74,750 | +4.8% | 27,600 | Bachelor's |
| 13 | [Market Research Analyst and Marketing Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/market-research-analyst-and-marketing-specialist) | $78,760 | +6.7% | 87,200 | Bachelor's |
| 14 | Art, Drama, and Music Teacher, Postsecondary | $78,620 | +1.7% | 9,000 | Master's (graduate study) |

Wages are BLS OEWS, May 2025. Projected change, annual openings and typical entry education are BLS Employment Projections. Occupation descriptions are O\*NET. Nothing on this page is estimated and no figure is generated by an AI model.

Full record for any row, including wage percentiles and state-level pay: https://nuecareer.com/careers/{slug} or https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/{slug}. Other majors: https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology