Why Make Art at Wheaton?
Program Overview
We invite students, whether or not you think of yourselves as artists, to experience the power of creative expression through art-making as an important facet of your liberal arts education. For those passionate about pursuing a major or minor in art, our curriculum offers you a comprehensive framework of courses designed to incrementally build skills and reinforce core concepts across artistic disciplines, enriched by related programming:
- In 100-level foundation courses (Drawing I, Two-Dimensional Design, and Spatial Dynamics) you will develop technical competencies, visual problem solving and the language of visual criticism in two-dimensional composition and three-dimensional form.
- 200-level elective courses in animation, drawing, film production, graphic design, painting, photography, printmaking and sculpture allow you to discover your own personal vision and creative voice. You will develop new technical skills and the process of visual invention through multiple iterations of an idea. It is expected that as an art major, you will explore several different artistic disciplines before narrowing your focus, as cross-fertilization of ideas and media expands creative thinking.
- 300-level elective courses foster more in-depth development of your personal expression within a specific artistic discipline. This process culminates in the 400-level Senior Seminar where you are challenged to create an original body of work within a chosen medium, and engage in all aspects of mounting a Senior Visual Art Majors’ Exhibition to showcase your work in our professional Beard and Weil Galleries.
- A required minimum of two courses in art history provides you with an historical context of contemporary art making.
- You will have numerous opportunities to engage with original art objects, not only in Wheaton’s Permanent Collection and Marion Gebbie Archives & Special Collections, housed in the Madeleine Clark Wallace Library, but also in museums and galleries in Providence, Boston, and New York on Arts in the City sponsored trips. You will also learn from visiting artists who exhibit their work in the Beard and Weil Galleries and are invited to give lectures, workshops, and demonstrations through the Evelyn Danzig Haas ’39 Visiting Artist Program.
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