The program in Art encompasses the closely related pursuits of creative studio art and art history. Both emphasize the rich diversity of human experience as it is expressed in visual form. The transmission of personal and cultural values through objects is a phenomenon that can be observed around us constantly in daily life; it is also something that happens over time, through space, and across cultures. Indeed, our need to make, experience, and comprehend art is as old and as profound as our need to speak. It is through art that we can understand ourselves and our potential, and it is through art that we will be understood and remembered by those who will come after us.
The Department of Art and Art History offers two majors: one with a concentration in creative studio art and one with a concentration in art history. Both majors, as part of the broad liberal arts tradition, foster the development of analytical skills, engagement with ideas, and the exploration of social and personal values. Consequently, students majoring in Art and Art History have found their study a good point of departure for careers in education, professional art, advertising, communications, architecture, art criticism, and museum work, as well as law, business and government.
Through creative work, Studio Art courses develop skills that emphasize visual perception and articulation, conceptual and practical problems, and technical skills in a variety of media and processes. Foundation courses in basic design and composition prepare students for creative work in courses dealing with particular media or processes, such as painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, drawing, mixed media, electronic media, and photography. Upper level courses develop students’ conceptual and artistic skills needed for successful completion of a final thesis project highlighted in the annual Senior Show at the Hallie Ford Museum of Art.
The courses in Art History survey all periods from the Stone Age to the present in the Ancient Mediterranean region, Europe, and North America, with limited offerings in contemporary art and in the art of China and Japan. Some of these courses range widely over a broad region and through a long period (Monuments and Themes of Western Art History, for instance), while others are more focused on a special art form or tradition, a unique locale, or a single individual or monument. In many of these courses, the University’s art collections provide special opportunities both for class research projects and for individual study. Art History students are also strongly advised to study French or German as their foreign language. Further, they are encouraged to work in disciplines closely related to Art History (e.g., Classics, English and Comparative Literature, History, Religious Studies, and Anthropology). Finally, Art History students are encouraged to take advantage of the many opportunities for travel and foreign study offered by Willamette programs in China, France, Greece, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Japan, England, and Spain.
The Art Building is located on the northwest corner of the campus at State and Winter Streets. Built in 1905 as a medical school and later used as the science building and then the College of Music, the building was completely renovated for use by the Department of Art and Art History in 1977, and remodeled with a 6,600 square foot addition in 2002-2003. The building includes studios for ceramics, drawing and design, painting, printmaking, photography, and digital imaging; an Art History seminar room and classroom; a student gallery; and faculty and administrative offices. The department is well equipped with a large slide collection, a growing digital image collection, and studio equipment needed to make works of art in a variety of media. The Germaine Fuller Japanese Garden adjacent to the building is another educational and aesthetic resource.
Integral to the program in Art and Art History is the Hallie Ford Museum of Art, one block from the Art Building. The museum enriches both the Art History and Studio Art programs, offering opportunities to study, firsthand, works of American, European, Asian, and Native American art, to conduct research projects on particular objects or groups of objects in the University’s growing collection, and to study curatorial practices in anticipation of possible careers in museum work. Many Art History classes meet in the Roger Hull Lecture Hall at the museum.
Beginning in 2009, classes in digital and installation art are offered in Ford Hall, the new state-of-the-art classroom and studio building on campus. Ford Hall is adjacent to historic Gatke Hall, which houses an updated sculpture studio on the lower level. These facilities together with the Art Building itself and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art provide a variety of spaces and settings for the study of Art and Art History.
While students may not double major in Studio Art and Art History, they may have a major in one and a minor in the other.