Art

Become An Agile Thinker and Maker

Whitman’s studio art major offers an intensive undergraduate program spanning diverse media, processes and ideas. Through extensive personal instruction, students are given the intellectual and technical tools to become agile thinkers and makers. The art classroom is a dynamic space where students wrestle actively with the materials and concepts that inform the practice of art in the 21st century.

Learn From Our Dynamic and Inventive Faculty

The Art Department has an active faculty whose areas of specialization include: Drawing, Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics, Printmaking, Book Arts, Photography, and New Genres. The program provides a balance between traditional materials and visually based art practices, and theoretically and technologically driven modes of art production. Without dictating a singular method in the production of art, students are encouraged to think across disciplines, and to explore and research a wide variety of approaches in their art making.

Master Visual Languages 

As a major or minor, students progress through foundation-level courses to intermediate and advanced courses, where they gain fluency with the materials and techniques of visual language. Students learn creative problem-solving skills, non-linear and abstract-thinking skills, and how to interpret and express complex ideas in a wide range of sensorial forms. During the senior year, art majors participate in a unique year-long seminar which, in addition to research, production and critiques, includes a faculty-led fieldtrip to New York City. The major culminates in a thesis exhibition of an original body of work produced over their two final semesters.

Thrive on Experimentation and Exploration

Students of the Art Department, whether for a semester or throughout an entire major, learn to be powerful thinkers and makers, learn to thrive in an environment of experimentation and exploration, and learn to ask compelling questions of what art can be in the world today and tomorrow.