The Department of Art engages students in the conceptual and technical skills of artmaking. In a mentorship-based program, students work closely with accomplished faculty, who are distinguished artists representing a wide variety of media and ideas. Small classes nurture students as they master the intellectual and material challenges of studio art and burnish their creativity.
Faculty are dedicated professors with national and international renown as artists in ceramics, design studies, drawing, new and emerging media, sculpture, painting, photography, printmaking and other art-related fields.
Within the context of a liberal arts education, majors ground their studies in a rigorous cross-disciplinary curriculum, and many have dual majors and minors in such areas as anthropology, architectural studies, art history, psychology, biology and gender and sexuality studies. Art majors integrate their studies in a senior-year capstone project, which culminates in an exhibition judged by professional guest artists.
Professors often include students in collaborative projects within and outside the College community, providing real-world professional experience and exposure to galleries, artists, and decision makers in the art world and beyond.
The Cummings Arts Center houses outstanding studio facilities including: a 3,000-square-foot print studio; light-filled painting, drawing, sculpture, and ceramic studios; a flexible new media production studio; a computer lab; a white box exhibition space; educational galleries; individual studio spaces for senior art majors; and more. The department offers a wide range of art production equipment and techniques, including a bronze foundry, computer-controlled ceramics kilns, black-and-white darkrooms, 3D printing and animation systems, a stone lithographic press and photo-polymer etching processes.
With proximity to two major art centers—New York City and Boston–as well as an on-campus museum and local galleries, students complement studio and classroom learning with hands-on experience. They also benefit from study abroad opportunities and paid internships under the direction of professional artists, galleries, museums, auction houses, and other art-related cultural institutions.
Majors have gone onto successful careers as practicing artists, educators, curators, architects, filmmakers, designers, media makers, art therapists and a broad range of professional enterprises that value innovative, creative and collaborative thinkers and makers.
