The studio art program offers a rich and diverse range of investigations across the disciplines of art making and art history. Integrating extensive liberal arts offerings with a broad studio experience, majors may choose to balance exploration with focus in a particular area as preparation for graduate school or future work in an art-related field. Critical thinking, imaginative problem-solving, and self-reflective evaluation are key components in the development of the theoretical and technical aspects of art making. Through art courses students gain competency in visual language, an increasingly important skill in contemporary culture. Visual and verbal analytical and organizational skills learned in the studio apply to thoughtful practice in many arenas of our complex world.

The studio art major presents students with a four-course foundations program to be completed within the first two years. Students then proceed through exploratory courses chosen from the areas of ceramics, communication design, drawing, fibers, metals, painting, photography, printmaking, and sculpture. In the third and fourth years of study students concentrate in an area of their choice. Faculty participate not only as teachers within their area of expertise but also as advisors, who help students select and pursue the courses and course study best suited to the student.

The Schick Art Gallery (click here) offers students, the college community and the public an opportunity to study significant contemporary exhibitions that compliment the Studio Art curriculum. Art from museums, galleries, private collections and artists is borrowed for exhibitions that address a wide range of disciplines and are often accompanied by catalogues, gallery lectures and discussions. In addition, there is an annual art faculty and juried Skidmore student exhibition. For thirty years the Schick Art Gallery has played an integral role as a teaching lab in the Department of Art to fully educate students in the visual arts and creative process.