Art and Art History
Develop your creative skills, have the freedom to grow artistically and intellectually, and be challenged to reach beyond your limits.
Department of Art and Art History
The Fine Arts Building, on the main campus of the University, houses the Art Department Office, the University Art Museum, and the Museum's study center, as well as faculty offices, lecture and studio classrooms, twenty graduate studios and several individual and shared undergraduate studio spaces. There are classrooms for painting, drawing, and two-dimensional design and two spacious printmaking classrooms with facilities for intaglio, screenprint, and digital printmaking. A large multi-purpose room accommodates critiques, installations, and exhibitions. The photography area has laboratories for traditional processes, a photo critique space and digital photography labs in Fine Arts and two other locations. A newly renovated "smart classroom" has computer and video equipment for art history and film studies classes.
The design and flexibility of the building facilitates students' ability to create using a variety of techniques and processes, including film, video, sculpture, and digital processing. Among the features built into this new facility are: an in-ground furnace and overhead rail for classic investment casting; a high-bay welding and metal fabrication shop with forge; a wood/pattern shop; electric and gas-fired kilns; a figure modeling room; plaster/mold making facilities; a wax working room; plastics/paint spray booth; sand blast booth; and a digital media suite; and an enclosed outdoor work area. Fume hoods, slotted vents and dust collection systems are integrated throughout the building.
Well-appointed, professional digital production facilities including Apple workstations running the latest Adobe CC Suite; several large-format, archival inkjet printers; high-resolution scanners; 3-D printers; studio lighting equipment; film, video, and digital cameras and equipment for student loan; plus a recently-renovated darkroom facility for traditional photo processes.
The University Art Museum occupies 11,000 square feet in the Fine Arts Building. Works by matriculating graduate students are on view yearly in the Graduate Thesis Exhibition in the Museum as well as four yearly exhibitions that showcase the work of both established and emerging artists. The Museum's art collections reflect more than 30 years of late-Modern and contemporary art and include more than 3,000 works, primarily on paper. The Museum offers internships in a variety of areas for Art History and Art majors, as well as a Study Center where small groups of students can examine works of art at first-hand.
Our faculty is a diverse group of scholars and professional artists. Our research and creative activity takes us all over the United States and to many parts of the world. Through our books, articles, exhibitions, permanent installations, and preservation work we make an active contribution to ongoing social dialogue, questioning, discovering, and raising public awareness. Always learning from our students, we provide opportunities for students to share in our research and creative activities through special one-on-one internships and independent studies.
1400 Washington Avenue
Albany, NY 12222
United States
On Site: Wednesday, 2 to 4 p.m.
By Phone: Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.