To imagine is to think otherwise.
The Department of Art is committed to fostering a transformative, interdisciplinary education for learners who aspire to explore ideas that are hospitable for the well-being of individuals, communities, and the planet. As we evolve to address the demands and opportunities of current and future creative practices, we will continue to use the invaluable experience gained over time to refine our Undergraduate and Graduate programs.
Art’s inherent capacity to generate multiple perspectives and interpretations allows for a nuanced understanding of our increasingly complex world.
We aim to nurture self-care, care of others and cultivate empathy, so that we can engage with communities both within our department and beyond. Through deep listening and close looking, we seek to expand our perceptual capacities; creating new forms of making, being, and thinking towards sustainable practices in art and design. We believe in art’s potential to offer alternative modes of thinking, representations, and models, as well as to embody and enact our aspirations.
Art is made in context.
We encourage our art, art education, and design students to situate their practices and their own creative identities within historical, theoretical, conceptual, geographic and institutional frameworks. We are fortunate to be a part of a top-tier research university, enabling collaboration between artists and experts in other fields of inquiry. As such, we ask our students to engage in a process of rich qualitative research and reflection to locate the unseen work in the future, to hold collective ownership of our endeavors, and to envision and craft inclusive and equitable worlds for following generations.