38 Arts Course Programs

Culture shapes our perspectives, values, our personalities, and our fears. Our communities' cultural practices and identity constructs impact and shape our societies. Understanding the richness of diversity and opportunities for collaboration strengthens our possibilities for equity and inclusion. Art transforms a society by influencing opinions, accessing experiences, and allowing us to be visual or experiential witnesses to past events.

Each of the three areas within the studio arts concentration--ceramics, drawing and painting, and photography--has common studio foundation and art history requirements. All students concentrating in the studio arts must take at least two introductory (100-level) studio arts courses from the following areas: drawing/painting, 3D arts (ceramics, sculpture), and the lens-based arts (film, photography); students must also complete at least one art history courses. It is recommended that a student should have completed (or be enrolled in) at least two of the studio foundations courses and one art history survey course at the time of moderation.

The art major at Colorado College offers an integrative approach to studying the history and practice of art, architecture, design, and museum studies. The major introduces a wide variety of liberal arts students to the history of art and provides opportunities to experience the power of creative processes through making. Our program is structured to ensure that all majors experience the practice of creating art and are capable of thoughtful analysis of the visual language of works of art. We hope to prepare our majors for graduate study or careers in the visual arts, but the art major also develops visual, analytical, and written skills that qualify students for careers in areas other than the arts.

The Department of Art offers an integrated curriculum of studio and art history courses that teach students how to engage in creative artistic practices and think critically about images in the world. All art courses assume that images are embedded in artistic, social, political, and cultural contexts. Our curriculum places a strong emphasis on experiential learning.

The Department of Art offers an integrated curriculum of studio and art history courses that teach students how to engage in creative artistic practices and think critically about images in the world. All art courses assume that images are embedded in artistic, social, political, and cultural contexts. Our curriculum places a strong emphasis on experiential learning.

The Studio Art Minor combines intensely engaged faculty, and the professional facilities of a larger school, with the personal attention paid to each student's artistic and scholarly development only possible at a smaller college. The program offers a vast forum of ideas and concepts preparing you for a wide range of disciplines. You will have access to a shared studio space for interaction with classmates. Our faculty and staff will help to cultivate your passions and build on experiences for your career and is dedicated to a liberal arts education that prepares you within a broad, humane perspective for a life of inquiry, creativity, and critical and analytical thinking. The Nancy G Unobskey Visiting Artist Program enables Studio Art to bring internationally recognized artists to Goucher’s campus and provides students with meaningful and significant access to the artists via exhibitions in the Silber Gallery, studio visits, discussion groups and lectures. Some previous visiting artists include Linda Montano, Ann Hamilton, Whitfield Lovell, Mark Dion & Layla Ali. Our minor complements many areas of study, including majors such as the Visual, Library and Material Culture, Integrative Arts Study, Digital Arts, Communication and Media Studies, as well as secondary minor education in art history, and a concentration in arts management.

Whether concentrating on studio art or art history, Wabash College art majors develop a set of visual skills: looking, composing, and understanding. Along with the knowledge gained within the humanities, students use these skills in creating and interpreting works of art. Whereas studio art develops visual expression, art history puts visual expression into words. Students develop both skills over several related art courses, concentrating on building both a visual and a verbal vocabulary. For specific art class offerings, check out our curriculum.

The Integrative Arts Studies Program allows students to develop intellectually, creatively, and artistically beyond the boundaries of traditional art majors. Working closely with faculty mentors, students choose their own paths to becoming the kind of interdisciplinary artist they imagine themselves within the creative economy. If you are still discovering the kind of artist you want to be, or if you want to work across multiple disciplines, then this major is for you.

The Associate of Arts with an emphasis in Studio Art is available at Colorado Mountain College in Aspen, Carbondale and Steamboat Springs. Not every course is offered on every campus, some campuses may require technology enhanced modalities to complete the degree. For more information, please see Academic Programs at Colorado Mountain College.

In Whitman’s Art Department, you’ll learn to be an agile thinker and maker, to thrive in an environment of experimentation and exploration, and to ask compelling questions of what art can be in the world today and tomorrow. Here you can study book arts, ceramics, drawing, new genre arts, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture. You can make unique connections between areas of study, like our Art-Environmental Science combined major or our Human-Centered Design concentration. You can find artistic community in the Fine Arts House. And you can do it all at a top liberal arts college in Washington’s beautiful interior.

With two distinct tracks available in Studio Art and Art History, the Art major offers something for both creators and curators. This flexible major allows you to develop analytical and technical skills, preparing you to make your own original contributions to the field. Art students admitted to the Prototype Program will have access to personal studio space on campus, as well as the opportunity to assist select faculty on special projects and exhibitions.

Immerse yourself in the craft, culture, and theory of current fine art practices, prepare for a successful career as a visual artist. The Art Practice program offers production-based courses founded on the concepts, skills and cultural viewpoints that characterize contemporary art practice. Our goal is to educate students, both majors and minors, in the craft, culture, and theory of current fine art practices to prepare them for successful careers as artists.

The Department of Art comprises two programs: art history and visual arts. Majors in the department are expected to elect one of these programs. The major in art history is devoted primarily to the historical and critical study of the visual arts as an embodiment of some of humanity’s cultural values and a record of the historical interplay of sensibility, thought, and society. The major in visual arts is intended to encourage a sensitive development of perceptual, creative, and critical abilities in visual expression.

Isabelle de Maison Rouge is an art historian and an art critic. She has a Ph.D. in art and art sciences from La Sorbonne. The last book published is «Le mythe de l'artiste, au-delà des idées acquis», Le cavalier Bleu éditions - 2017. She writes numerous contemporary art essays and texts for art catalogues and actively contributes to various contemporary art magazines (artpress, Optical Sound, Possible, Point Contemporain). She is Secretary-Genral of AICA France. She is also a lecturer for contemporary art at New York University Paris, HEC, and Audencia Business School. As a freelance curator, she explores themes she studies (such as Business model, le paradoxe du cartel, Trouble d’identité) and artists she supports. As a researcher, she focuses on the artist economy, artist business, art world, collectors, female artists, duo artists, art and law, bridges between art and management, art and geopolitics, or art and care.

The curriculum in History of Art immerses students in the study of visual and material culture. Students learn to interpret through methodologies dedicated to the historical, the material, the critical, and the theoretical. Majors and minors are encouraged to supplement courses taken in the department with history of art courses offered at Haverford, Swarthmore, and the University of Pennsylvania. Majors are also encouraged to study abroad for a semester of their junior year.