Art History and Studio Art
Division of Humanities
The visual arts have an impact upon each of us every day of our lives. Studying the visual arts is foundational to understanding and participating in society and culture—past and present; distant and near—to developing and strengthening connections amongst us, and to personal expression.
The Art Program offers instruction in both studio practice and art history, with a major and a minor available in both areas. All classes are held in the Jones Visual Arts Center, the most interesting and exciting building on campus. In beautiful, purpose-built studios, students learn drawing, oil painting, ceramics, hot glass, and photography. Courses in art history cover a global range of traditions and cultural contexts in which students encounter artworks from diverse stylistic, historical, and iconographical points of view.
The capstone experiences in both of our major programs offer seniors the opportunity for independent advanced study and public presentation. Studio art majors prepare a unified body of creative work during the spring term and present and exhibition in the Aegon gallery of the Visual Arts Center. Art history majors research and write a thesis on a topic of their choice and present it in a public lecture. Majors and minors often choose to continue their education in the visual arts in graduate school as preparation for careers as artists, educators, or staff members in museums, galleries, and other collection venues.
Studying the visual arts provides a cornerstone to a liberal arts education, and virtually every course in the Art Program enrolls students from a broad variety of disciplines. They come in search of correspondences among the visual arts to other forms of human expression: historical, anthropological, literary, musical, and dramatic. They may also wish to fortify their undergraduate experiences in the liberal arts by connecting aesthetic meaning and judgment to fields in the sciences and mathematics. Whatever motivation might bring a student into the Visual Arts Center, however, an appreciation for the enduring values of art provides solid groundwork for the qualities of leadership and citizenship that Centre seeks to nurture in its students.
Faculty
Sheldon Tapley (chair), Michelle Burdine, Amy Frederick, Stephanie Galli, Peter Haffner, Judith Keiser, David King
Student Representatives
Olivia Bunger, Madalyn Mead
Art History Courses
Studio Art Courses
Course Descriptions