About the School of Art

The School of Art at University of the Arts deeply values and celebrates creative curiosity, interdisciplinary collaboration and exploration of numerous media and practices through its undergraduate programs in

• Art (a multidisciplinary exploration of media and disciplines in the School of Art);
• Art Education 4+1 BFA & MAT;
• Creative Writing;
• Fine Arts with emphases in 
  • Expanded Drawing and Print Media,
  • Painting, and 
  • Sculpture (an inclusive community of 3-D makers); and
• Photography. 

UArts also offers 20 minors across disciplines and programs, so you can make your other passions a part of your UArts experience. For example, UArts’ Art Therapy and Art Education minors are popular with School of Art majors. The School of Art also offers minors in 

• Art History, 
• Creative Writing,
• Painting and Drawing,
• Photography,
• Print Media, and
• Sculpture.

The School of Art offers an MFA program in Book Arts and Printmaking. Learn more.

You will be professionally prepared for a creative practice that emphasizes critical thinking and technical skill. You can create your own education through interdisciplinary learning and mixed media, or focus on a chosen discipline. No matter your path, you’ll learn to express your personal vision and innovate your chosen artforms. 

The School of Art breaks with traditional, medium- and discipline-specific art education. Instead, UArts makes it possible for you to explore working and skill-building in different media throughout the school: Screen printing can inform your approach to photography; photography can be integrated with painting; drawing, writing and objects can live in a work together. In other words, you can mix your media. The flexibility to develop skills in numerous areas allows you to choose your educational path and find your individual voice and expression across media—the way contemporary artists approach creativity today.

Here are some examples of School of Art courses that can expand your practice at UArts:

• Handbuilding and Throwing Ceramics
• Embroidery
• Special Effects/Prosthetics
• Papermaking
• Drone Photography
• Natural Dyes
• Drawing into Painting
• Spoken Word and Performance Poetry
• Non-silver Printmaking
• Bookbinding Methods
• Experimental Costume
• Dirty Pictures: A History of Art Censorship
• Queer(ing) Art History

Beyond mixing media and learning new practices, you’ll have the ability to collaborate with other artists of all kinds: actors, dancers, animators, musicians, filmmakers, designers, writers and multidisciplinary student artists. As well as being immersed in an environment that values and nurtures creativity and the revelations that experimentation brings, you’ll have access to a myriad of tools and resources you can bring into your practice.

Art students have access to photography, sculpture, painting and drawing studios; a metalshop, woodshop and foundry; a makerspace, screen printing, weaving and ceramic facilities; and many, many more spaces in which you can create and share your work. UArts is also home to 12 galleries, including the storied Philadelphia Art Alliance and the critically acclaimed Rosenwald-Wolf Gallery. 

The Albert M. Greenfield Makerspace is a 3,500-square-foot digital and traditional fabrication studio that houses state-of-the-art digital and analog equipment that helps you create virtually anything you can imagine. It is outfitted with

• 3-D printers and scanners;
• a router and a mill;
• laser, vinyl and substrate cutters;
• printed circuit board (PCB) and decal printers; 
• and much more.

The Center for Immersive Media (CIM) helps you explore and create with augmented and virtual reality, performance motion-capture and human-computer interaction. At 5,600 square feet, CIM is the largest such facility in the region and includes

• An optical motion-capture system for full body performance capture and location-based VR applications,
• Multiple video projectors,
• Lighting instruments with adjustable zoom and color,
• A Four-channel audio system,
• A station with control surfaces for all of the above,
• A 16-station computing classroom with PCs optimized for real-time computer graphics rendering, and
• Two large project rooms with ceiling grids for development of installations and virtual environments.

UArtists graduate prepared to make significant cultural contributions, exhibit art in galleries and museums, run their own creative businesses, create work for diverse communities and public spaces, and effect social change through their self-expression.

Studying at University of the Arts’ School of Art immerses you in all the arts. We encourage you to further explore the passions you know you have and discover those you haven’t uncovered yet. Learn guitar. Write poems. Take yoga, tap or both. Start a business or a website, build a stage or film set, work with fibers and ceramics. 

Advance your creativity and make your mark.