School of Art Overview

The School of Art joins four other remarkable Schools in the College of Fine Arts (CFA) at Carnegie Mellon; Architecture, Design, Drama and Music. Founded in 1905, the College was the first comprehensive arts teaching institution in the US. Though we are almost a century old, our hearts, hands and minds keep shaping the future.

Breadth and Depth

Our approach to art in both our BFA and MFA (ranked among the top ten nationally and second in multimedia) programs is an expansive and inclusive one for students who know the advantages of both studios and studies in other disciplines. You will see this inclusive and expansive approach in our curriculum, but it's also in our attitude. Experimentation, crossing boundaries, and hybrid mentalities are all encouraged as well as engaging the history and traditions of art. We offer breadth and depth in renowned degree programs and all the benefits of a university that enjoys high rankings. Together, in both practical and visionary terms, we look forward to considering with you what art has been, is and could be.

We offer the faculty, training, and facilities in a supportive environment that fosters problem solving skills, an open and eager mind, and the ability to work creatively as artists in a complex, rapidly changing global culture. We strive to educate the whole person with creative abilities and an intellectual capacity and rigor that moves back and forth between personal and public, cultural and social concerns.

The curriculum is at the heart of who and what we are in the School of Art. Innovative and progressive, we embrace new technologies but still honor the hand. We are quite comfortable with the mix of the manual, the machine, the Mac (or PC), and the mind, and yet we don't ever want to become too comfortable. Edging into new territories, imaginary or real, is part of what we're about.

One of our distinctive curricular edges is our blend of concept and media studios. Concept studios focus on generating and developing ideas in courses devoted to broad themes such as the self and the human being, time and space, and systems and processes before proceeding to our unique community affiliation and senior year projects. Media studios focus on the materials, techniques and processes of art ranging from charcoal to cast aluminum to constructions in cyberspace. The curriculum as a whole integrates form and content, technique and concept.

The first two years provide a broad and balanced exposure to the complete range of media that we have to offer and a variety of creative processes and conceptual approaches. Juniors and seniors may specialize in one of our three areas of concentration: Electronic and Time Based Art (including animation, video, robotic art and other digital and interactive media); Painting, Drawing and Printmaking (with courses ranging from figure drawing to two-dimensional projections in space); or Sculpture, Installation and Site Work (with special topics courses such as environmental sculpture and sound installation and media such as metals, foundry, clay and wood). Many of our students cross over concentrations as well as mixing their media in a flexible program that suits and stimulates individual interests.

In nourishing creativity, we hope to instill a boundless appetite, the hunger for something new, something real or so much about artifice that it convinces us of a new reality, something beyond belief or reason, something transforming. The studio curriculum coupled with the academic courses in and outside of the School of Art presents our students with a structured smorgasbord. Depending on their predilections, receptivity, and proactivity, students may think they've eaten meat and potatoes, herbivorous nouvelle cuisine, or conceptual ice cream, but they are purposefully never quite sated.

Looking outside …

A second distinguishing aspect to our curriculum is its intentional engagement with communities outside of the university on local, national and international levels. Some students arrange internships at places ranging from the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, Italy to Artists Image Resource in Pittsburgh. Most of our juniors take Art in Context, a course in which they identify an organization, place or audience to research, engage with and respond to. Such projects have led to a number of relationships around the city with organizations such as Pittsburgh Women's Center and Shelter, Pittsburgh Vision Services and the Humane Society as well as to independent efforts such as setting up a radio station in the Squirrel Hill Tunnel.

Graduate students complete Community Affiliation Projects. One graduate student's artist residency at Western PA State Penitentiary led to his curating an exhibit of inmate art for the lobby of City Theater during its run of Richard Wright's Men Who Live Underground. Some of these community affiliation projects are less institutionally affiliated and more personal as Todd Pavlisko's project with William Allan Dorsey, a blind gospel singer who performs on the streets of Oakland. Pavlisko (MFA '02) produced CD's of Dorsey's singing for him to sell or give to his friends and street audience. Dorsey came to campus to sing at Todd's thesis exhibit gallery talk in the Miller Gallery. Undergraduate projects have included: illustrated and informative placemats concerning women's issues for a popular coffeehouse; murals in the market (Strip District) area of Pittsburgh and at the Allegheny Women's Reproductive Health Center; portraits of and for members of the East Liberty Community Center; works for Mandala – Healing the Environment, an environmental art exhibition at the Pittsburgh Center for the Arts; photo projects in elementary after-school programs; photo surveys of cross-cultural adoption families; and set designs for Pittsburgh Opera Company's production of Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle, staged in an armory. Students may respond to their community connection back in the studio, but often “go public.” David Pegher (BFA '93) drew portraits for the parents of premature infants on site, deleting all the medical paraphernalia that photographs could not exclude. Almost a decade later, while teaching elementary school, he is still making (and publishing) drawings of at-risk and stillborn infants for parents. From such experiences, students gain greater experience in verbal and written proposals, public relations and expanding the role and placement of art and the artist in society.

And Inside …

An institution depends on the quality of its people. In the School of Art at Carnegie Mellon, a committed faculty of 30 active professionals and a dedicated support staff of 10 share our student's enthusiasm for the arts, and appreciate a varied range of backgrounds and experience. We build on, cultivate and celebrate diversity in educating students for and of the future. Our 200 undergraduate art majors and 18 graduate students are talented and accomplished students who make for a stimulating creative and social environment. It's difficult to be anonymous here; we're a tight community. We all work hard, but we also know how to have fun in ways that continue to surprise and amaze us all.

Mentors …

The School of Art has 22 full-time faculty and up to 10 additional active professionals through joint, courtesy and adjunct appointments. Faculty are professionally active in the international arena with exhibits, presentations, research projects and papers at venues, sites and conferences in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Americas and even the moon (Lowry Burgess's Lunar Aperture was the first nonscientific payload on a NASA space shuttle). Faculty have obtained grants and awards from Creative Capital, Art Matters, and the Ford, Guggenheim, Heinz, Kellogg, Jerome, Lannan, Mellon, Pew, Pollack Krasner, and Rockefeller Foundations. They have also held Fulbrights, National Endowment for the Arts, National Science Foundation, Canadian Arts Council and state arts council fellowships as well as university teaching awards. Like our students, faculty are engaged in a variety of creative pursuits from planning ecosystems for post-industrial landscapes to interactive video installations exploring issues of race and gender to paintings of dinosaurs painted on bird feathers and exquisite landscapes that investigate perceptual phenomena. And that's just scratching the surface! As formal and informal mentors, members of our award-winning faculty focus on their students as individuals. The school"s 10:1 student-to-faculty ratio provides for an intense, professional learning environment. Faculty join staff in organizing regular advising meetings every semester for each class, keeping students abreast of issues and procedures related to registration, sophomore and senior reviews, study abroad opportunities, career services, commencement, and more.

And Peers …

There are roughly 200 undergraduate art majors and 18 graduate students who interact with undergraduates as teaching assistants and co-artists. Our students hail from California to Maine and from points around the globe from Chile to China. Their passions are all over the map‚ˆš‚‰* drawing dervishes or dreams, painting painstaking portraits and arresting abstractions, fashioning sculptures from chocolate chip cookie dough, clay, welded steel and cast aluminum, animating invented species in videos and robotic constructions, erecting film sets from scavenged lumber, and conjuring environments both maniacal and meditative. Classmates really move, inspire and constructively challenge each other!

Crossing Boundaries/Borders

(physically)

Other challenging experiences might include international study. The School of Art has established connections with 25 schools around the world. Over half of our recent graduating seniors have studied abroad in countries such as Japan, Chile, Germany and New Zealand and students from those schools enliven the mix here. College of Fine Arts summer programs, such as Discovering the City, an interdisciplinary arts course in cities such as Rome and Barcelona provide other options for international experience. The array of experiences our students bring back with them from all over the world enriches their creative process and our communal dialogue. In addition to these academic year programs, the School has also participated in numerous projects abroad in: an abandoned bottle factory in Sardinia, Italy; a former castle in Skoki, Poland through the Poznan Academy of Art; a defunct army base in Metzingen, Germany; the Aichi Prefectural Art Center in Nagoya, Japan; a vacant slaughterhouse, private gardens and the lagoon of Venice, in cooperation with the Scuola Grafica and civic organizations in Italy; and, in summer of 2001, in public areas of Schwabisch Hall, Germany.

(and intellectually)

We are further distinguished by an interdisciplinary approach that permeates all aspects of our programs. Whether it's drawing inspiration from Dante's Divine Comedy in Concept Studio I or designing sets for a Bartok opera in an Advanced Painting course or supporting a double major in Art and Human Computer Interaction, we relish and promote the inescapable and stimulating intersections between art and other disciplines. Our BFA students blend their professional training with academic courses. At least one in four courses are non-studio academic courses, building a broader education that better informs a creative life.

The Masters in Arts Management Program, Studio for Creative Inquiry and the Center for the Arts in Society are but three initiatives on campus that foster connections between the arts and the sciences and humanities. These centers sponsor events, courses and internships that examine, promote and expand the role of artists in our culture. The inauguration of the Center for the Arts in Society in 2000, a bridge between the College of Fine Arts and the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, has presented even more occasions to synthesize creative and humanistic forms of knowledge and practice. The School of Art is often the largest contingent in the audience for CAS events and courses. The new Arts in Society minor offered through the Center expands the arts histories curriculum at Carnegie Mellon. Students enrolled in the BHA and BSA programs enjoy a shared emphasis between fine arts and humanities or sciences. Art is one of the two most popular concentrations for BHA/BSA students. Over a third of recent graduates in art have minors or a second major in subjects ranging from business administration to biology. We have courtesy and joint faculty appointments with computer science, history, human computer interaction, and design … another indicator of our interdisciplinary appetite and appeal.

The university as a whole's strategic plan places additional emphasis on interdisciplinary inquiry and practice in the areas of information technology, bio-technology, the environment and the arts and humanities interface. The School of Art enjoys leadership and recognition in all of these areas.

Our curriculum is infused with information technology, exposing all our students to concepts and techniques in visualization and interactivity in traditional, digital and emerging technologies. Faculty utilize technology in education as in Lowry Burgess' Interactive Ancient Egypt learning lab, James Duesing's and Pamela Jennings' use of Blackboard and other web-based tools in courses such as Interactive Narratives in Physical Environments Environments, and Peter Coppin's exploration of remote experience in the course, Telepresence Art and Applications. Information technology permeates interactive CD ROM installations as well as figure drawings.

The School of Art also addresses bio-technology through courses such as The Art of Biology/The Biology of Art and through faculty and Studio for Creative Inquiry projects. We address the environment through courses such as Environmental Sculpture (featured in Sculpture Magazine), Theory and Practice in Environmental Thinking and Art and Green Visions/Grey Infrastructure. In these courses, undergraduates have become involved in recycling computers, organizing public dialogues on the development of a proposed expressway, and designing restorative plantings for a former slag heap. Environmentally informed faculty and STUDIO fellow projects include Nine Mile Run Greenway, the Persephone Project, and Three Rivers, Second Nature.

Connecting the arts with humanities occurs through BFA and MFA curriculum requirements, strong participation in and cooperation with the new Center for Arts in Society and through our own courses such as Social History of Animation and the History and Philosophy of Museums. All of these interdisciplinary initiatives have enhanced our strong reputation in the specialized disciplines of painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, installation and site work, and, over the last two decades, digital and interactive art, including video and animation.

Work: Where We Make It …

The School of Art occupies the upper floors of the College of Fine Arts (CFA) and the lower floors of Doherty Hall, two buildings that blend the grandeur and charm of original Henry Hornbostel architecture with state-of-the art facilities and spaces in which to make, live and breathe art. Students have 24-hour access to excellent digital facilities, new and improved printmaking and sculpture shops, and light-filled painting and drawing studios.

And Where We Display it …

Works made in these studios don't languish there. They appear in a variety of campus venues. The spacious Regina Gouger Millery Gallery presents both MFA and BFA exhibits each spring and also shows the work of faculty, alumni and other internationally recognized artists. Exhibits rotate weekly in the halls and foyers of CFA, the Ellis Gallery and the FRAME gallery, which is managed entirely by art students. Frequently, students present exhibits and projects off-campus, as well, combining vision with action as both artists and citizens, always contributing to the vitality of our culture.

Culture-At-Large

The School of Art brings in a steady stream of visiting artists and professionals from around the world to further broaden the resources and perspectives within our community. CFA sponsors annual interdisciplinary Wats:On? lectures that bring in leading practitioners in the arts. On top of the courses, concerts, plays and events of all categories on campus, there are numerous cultural and recreational opportunities in the larger Pittsburgh community and beyond. We are located in the dynamic neighborhood of Oakland, home of row houses and mansions, two universities and a college as well as our next-door-neighbor, the Carnegie Museums. Field trips to the Carnegie, the Mattress Factory and the Andy Warhol Museum and to sites such as Native American mounds in Ohio and the galleries of New York City balance personal explorations of the classical, mainstream and experimental art, theater, music and film scenes that Pittsburgh has to offer. Considered a cultural attraction and one of the most livable cities in the country, Pittsburgh has something for everyone, from mung bean pancakes in the Strip District and cable car inclines above the Monongahela River to relics at St. Anthony's and relaxation in our other neighbor, Schenley Park, designed by Frederick Olmsted.

Keeping Good Company …

Our alumni make us proud in the marks they have made on the world, in ways both celebrated and unsung. One of ours, Andy Warhol, has a whole museum devoted to his work and influence as well as a recent postage stamp bearing his self-portrait. The realist figuration of Philip Pearlstein, Nancy Hagin, Katherine Kuharic and John Currin (featured on "Best of 2002" cover of Artforum magazine), conceptual art of Mel Bochner and Diane Samuels, public commissions by Jonathan Borofsky and Joyce Kozloff, and evocative works of Renee Stout and Deborah Kass all attest to the School's interest in diversity and resistance to any singular style or approach.

And Creating Your Own …

Carnegie Mellon art alumni energize and enter many professions. One is the dean of an art school in DC. Two started Bellwether Gallery in Brooklyn, now relocated to Chelsea. Another duo paired up in their freshman year here, collaborated through and after graduate school, and started a dog-walking business in San Francisco to support their lives as sculptors. They now have their work in the permanent collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Some alumni have pursued MFA degrees or gone to law school, business school or into thoroughbred racehorse training, but most have found fulfilling (and sustaining) work that is related to their arts training. Career Services on campus takes very good care of our students, helping them to identify and secure entry level and subsequent positions that best match their needs and interests

Enthusiasm for the arts can often be mixed with anxiety about the value of a fine arts degree and its role in developing a fulfilling (and decent paying) career! The School of Art at Carnegie Mellon appreciates this concern and invites students and their parents to consider the arts as part of a larger picture. In 1997, the President’s Committee on Arts & Humanities said, “the arts and humanities are a ‘public good’ which benefits all Americans, just as surely as does a strong educational system.” On top of their incalculable aesthetic benefits, according to the federal government, nonprofit arts and culture in the U.S.: pump nearly $37 billion into the economy in annual expenditures; generate over $5 billion in revenue for federal, state and local governments; and provide more than 1.3 million full-time jobs. According to a 2002 report from Americans for the Arts, a nonprofit arts research organization, the nation’s nonprofit arts industry produces $134 billion in economic activity annually. This whole for-profit and non-profit aesthetic enterprise and its economic impact is fueled by the creative explorations of the nation’s artists. The School of Art at Carnegie Mellon is certainly a part of this enterprise and we are educating the artists who make it all possible!

With Creativity and Intelligence

Infinite career opportunities await our students – careers that satisfy a variety of personalities, talents and needs. The passion to create, rather than the lure of easy wealth, is usually the primary motive for artists. That passion can coexist with practicality. We provide the training and opportunities for both through our curriculum and programs.

Whether it's exhibiting at the Louvre in Paris or the Museum of Modern Art in New York, promoting art as a part of neighborhood redevelopment, painting with Russian orphans, coordinating cultural events for the cities of Santa Clarita and Clearwater, designing a fashion line for Oleg Cassini, free-lancing as a sound editor and DJ, founding a stained glass company (Archangel Studios) in Carnegie, PA or a Pittsburgh design firm, (Wall-to-Wall Studios), or becoming art educators, critics, curators, or conservators, our alumni continue to negotiate their way successfully in the world with creativity and intelligence.

Image Credit: Resource in Pittsburgh. Most of our juniors take Art in Context, a course in which they identify an organization, place or audience to research, engage with and respond to. Such projects have led to a number of relationships around the city with organizat Back to Top