Courses and Requirements
View Courses from the Vassar College Catalogue.
The department offers majors or correlates in Art History and Studio Art. Enriched by a comprehensive college art museum, both majors culminate in a one-semester senior thesis or independent studio project. Art 105-106 (Introduction to the History of Art)—required for majors and encouraged for all Vassar students—opens with monuments of the ancient world and ends with today’s global video as professors in the department present their areas of special expertise. Upper-level courses in Art History offer work in architectural and museum studies as well as art history and criticism. Academic credits may also be earned through study abroad and fieldwork or internships in the New York museums, galleries, and auction houses. In Studio Art, Art 107 (Studio Art Foundations: Approaches to Making), introduces core practices of contemporary art-making and opens the way for students with a range of art-making experience to advanced classes in drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, video, architecture, and digital art. An architecture sequence of introductory, intermediate, and advanced drawing and design classes is also offered.
The courses in the catalogue for Art (ART) include courses for Art History and Studio Art (studio work in design, drawing, painting, sculpture, photography, printmaking, video, architecture, and digital art.)
Campus Resources
All Vassar art history courses draw heavily upon selected analytical and historical readings to provide insight, background, and illumination to studied artworks. In order to provide students access to these materials within a reasonable budget, all required readings are available in the Art Library at the Reserve Desk. To ensure all students have access to required works, readings on reserve may be checked out for only three hours at a time.
Honors and Grants
Contact the department for more information about the following opportunities:
- Frances Daly Fergusson Prize
- Gertrude Buttenwieser Prins Prize
- Lewis Rubenstein Award
- Weitzel-Barber Art Travel Prize
- Research Fund for Senior Essays
The Office of Fellowships has additional fellowships, including the W.K. Rose Fellowship in the Creative Arts.
Majors Committee
The majors committee consists of elected majors and the department academic intern.
Additional student organizations include the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center Student Council, Vassar Artist Group, Vassar College Ceramics, and Phocus, Vassar’s Photography Club.
Opportunities
- Arts Education Program at Dia:Beacon
- Study Abroad, including at Eastern College Consortium (E.C.Co.) Program, Bologna, Italy, Glasgow School of Art, Temple University Rome, and many other programs.
- A variety of student jobs on campus engage with the arts, from research assistants to art history and studio art professors, to docents in the Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center
Art students have won numerous fellowships for further study and independent projects including the Fulbright, Beinecke, and Belle Skinner Fellowships. Art majors regularly engage in the discipline beyond Vassar via internships in museums, galleries, auction houses, and artists’ studios.