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The Art and Visual Culture Studies major at Seattle University integrates the fundamentals of artmaking with an exploration of art history and the ways visual culture shapes our world. It features a robust curriculum with a focus on innovative pedagogies and new technologies as it maintains a contemporary view of art that centers the margins and empowers students to envision social change.
Students in the major take three foundations courses in 2D, 3D and 4D artmaking and an introduction to visual culture studies and art history. These courses ground their studies in the essential media, techniques, histories and theories before specializing in Visual Art & Design or Visual Culture Studies within the major. Two capstone courses allow students to explore in more depth the interconnections between creative practice and issues such as technology, gender, race, and the environment.
The major prepares students for careers as a creative, positions in the art world, museums and non-profit arts organizations, art education, graduate work in art history, visual art and the humanities and other paths that reward creativity and critical thinking.
While the disciplines of visual art and art history may be more familiar, the interdisciplinary field of visual culture studies introduces students to the study of art and ideas as components of a broad landscape of popular media, cultural objects, and image technologies central to our contemporary experience. Students gain technical and analytical skills that allow them to participate in the ongoing innovations and critical discussions within our increasingly visually oriented society.
The Visual Art & Design (VAD) Specialization encourages students to explore their own unique artistic voice. Students build a body of work using open-ended assignments that can incorporate theoretical approaches, community-based work, and interdisciplinary practices. Courses include Drawing Through Social Media; Printmaking: The Art of Protest; Sculpting for Environmental and Social Justice.
The Visual Culture Studies (VCS) Specialization offers deep, episodic dives into different cultures and historical moments while keeping questions about the ethics of representation and the power dynamics of the making, display and circulation of images and objects at the center of students’ inquiry. Courses include Art and Place in the US West; Dandies and Dangerous Women; and New World Baroque.
Demonstrate proficiency in a variety of materials and techniques.
Interpret works of art and elements of visual culture, including your own art practice, as complex formal structures in relation to social, historical and cultural contexts.
Write convincingly about visual culture, your own art practice, and art in exhibition using visual and textual evidence culminating in a research and creative project in the major.
Produce a unified body of work for appropriate exhibition or a public or scholarly presentation and/or a professional portfolio suitable for a chosen career path.
Student and Faculty Trip to Los Angeles, funded by the Pigott Family Endowment for the Arts:
On a three-day trip to the city of Los Angeles, selected students get an opportunity to see different aspects of a major international art center. Students meet artists and see work in progress in their studios, talk with curators of small, non-profit art spaces as well as see influential art of the past and present in exhibitions at major museums. Faculty such as Ken Allan (art history) and Franc Guerrero (Visual Art) lead discussions that help students connect their studies and art practices to the histories and current debates that animate the global contemporary art world.
Students visit the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, a museum about museums, and a contemporary artist studio.
Departmental Honors projects can take the form of an exhibition of a body of work or an extended research paper on a specific topic developed by the student in consultation with a faculty advisor. Honors students gain valuable experience by presenting a 20-minute public talk on their project or organizing their exhibition at a campus venue in the spring quarter of the final year.
The Departmental Honors project proposal is due October 15th of the student's final year. Students interested in developing honors projects should contact a faculty member to begin discussions about the proposal in the spring quarter of their junior year.
Students in the major have gone on to graduate study in visual art, art history, museum studies and received Fulbright awards to study overseas. Recent acceptances to MFA, MA and PhD programs include New York University, Duke University, American University, Syracuse University, California College of the Arts, Georgetown University, School of the Art Institute Chicago, University of Washington, University of York, UK, and University of Essex, UK.
In addition to becoming art historians, graduates have also used their degrees to become museum curators, educators, event programmers, art writers, cultural critics, auction house professionals at Christie's and Sotheby's, non profit arts leaders, and grant writers, among other things.
Fine Art Graduates