Program in Visual Arts

The Program in Visual Arts at Princeton provides undergraduates with courses in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, ceramics, film/video, and digital photography. A variety of courses in the history and theory of film are also offered. Students from any class or department may take one or more courses, or they may elect to pursue a joint major under the auspices of the Department of Art and Archaeology and the Program in Visual Arts. This major, Program II-–Art History and Visual Arts, combines rigorous studio practice with a strong art history background. The studio courses encourage investigation of ideas and issues that are central to contemporary art as well as introduce students to a diversity of approaches and attitudes.

Instead of submitting the usual written thesis, student concentrators in art history and visual arts present an exhibition of a major studio project as their senior thesis. During their junior and senior year, they are provided with individual studio space for their independent work. Junior independent work is exhibited in the beginning of the senior year.

Studio courses are taught by artists with established reputations, who have been chosen for their commitment to teaching. During the last 25 years, over a hundred well-known artists have taught in the program, providing an invaluable resource few other institutions could match.

Our graduates include successful practicing artists who exhibit in major galleries and museums, art historians, curators, critics, and others working in art-related fields. The Program II major can serve as preparation for almost any postgraduate degree, and its graduates have become practicing physicians, lawyers, and executives, as well as scholars in a range of fields.

A certificate program is also available to students wishing to major in any department and do serious work in studio art as well. A certificate candidate will take a series of studio courses and certain art history courses and will do a junior independent project and mount a senior exhibition.

The contemporary art world is a thriving, vital locus of visual culture, currently described as a pluralistic situation in which a myriad of conceptual and interdisciplinary approaches are continually being redefined. It is in this spirit of discovery and invention that we offer education that emphasizes both techniques and concepts, to build the foundations of visual thinking in traditional media (drawing, painting, and sculpture), and also in the latest high technology media (video and digital photography).

Our goal is to fully engage the student’s intellectual capacity, while guiding that individual’s intuitive artistic processes to realization in the appropriate media. We believe that true originality can be nurtured in a setting that provides both structure and freedom, and that allows art to be made from the full range of sources and processes. Whether the student’s ultimate interest in art is as a profession or an avocation, the necessary foundation is the same. We share the liberal arts’ concern with an understanding of cultural history and the meaning of ideas. We have chosen not to emulate the preprofessional concerns of art schools, but to preserve the autonomy of creation and to participate in a broad general education.