Visual Studies Overview
The Department of Visual Studies and University at Buffalo support creative research/scholarship and teaching excellence. The Department is committed to diversity, scholarly innovation in the field of art history and visual studies as well as progressive art practice. The Department boasts an internationally recognized and professionally active full time faculty of 23. The Department of Visual Studies currently offers two principal programs: an Art Program and an Art History program both on the undergraduate and graduate levels.
The Art Program
The Undergraduate Art Program has undergraduate Art BA and BFA degree programs in the following studio concentrations: emerging practices, communication design, painting, photography, sculpture, visual studies studio and general studio. The undergraduate study of Art interfaces with a growing range of studio art, visual studies and university electives.
The Department of Visual Studies Graduate Art Program offers a competitive two-year MFA program that focuses on an interdisciplinary approach to Art practice, theory and scholarship.
The Department of Visual Studies extends its student activities and cultural programming outside of the university, frequently collaborating with area alternative media and exhibition spaces, galleries, and internationally recognized institutions. Buffalo itself is culturally active and diverse and also has proximity to Toronto.
The Art programs are accredited by The National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) and UB is an AAU accredited research institution.
The Art program has communal labs/creative studios located in the Center for the Arts. The studio labs are spacious, well equipped, intelligently organized and supported by full-time technicians in digital, photography, printmaking and sculpture areas. These labs support all major conventional, digital and experimental processes in art and design. Highlights include: a dedicated interactive art lab for advanced work; access to high-end computing and multimedia programs; an audio recording and editing suite; digital color and chemical b/w darkrooms; and sculpture facilities boasting the largest university foundry in the country. Video editing and production studios are available in the Department of Media Study.
In addition to the Department of Visual Studies, the Center for the Arts houses the University Art Galleries, Department of Media Study, Theatre and Dance, and four performance spaces.
Art History Program
Using a diverse range of methodological approaches, the Art History faculty helps students to acquire the necessary tools and knowledge to make sense of our visual world. Courses cover all of the world's major geographic areas, with individual professors exploring specific interests in social history, gender and race, post colonialism, problems of taste and patronage, as well as myth and narrative. An Art History major is ideal for students who wish to pursue a career in the arts and is equally valuable for those seeking to develop visual, analytical, and communicative skills. Recent graduates have gone on to work in museums and art galleries, to enroll in a variety of humanities graduate programs, and to pursue careers in law, government, and business.The Art History Program offers an Undergraduate BA and a Graduate MA in a globally oriented study of Art History.
