Hi, I’m a rising senior (yay).
I am interested in majoring in art but do not want to go to an art school because I’m not sure what I want to do with my life. What are some small liberal arts colleges with strong art programs? What schools (also potential safeties) am I leaving out?
I’m probably applying to:
Williams
Brown/RISD dual degree (it’s a pipe dream, I know)
Kenyon
Colby
Bowdoin? on paper I love it but don’t know too much about their arts program
Does anyone have personal experience with any of these schools’ arts programs?
Thanks so much
Here are a few to look into: Williams, Bard, Bowdoin, Colorado College
Hamilton has a new theatre and studio arts building and a separate art museum, in effect creating an arts neighborhood near the center of campus.
thanks so much!
Once you develop a preliminary list of colleges, it becomes a fairly straightforward process to browse through their course listings in studio art. If you like what you see – in terms of substance and variety – then, at least from this perspective, the college has a good art department.
Vassar’s art program is very strong, but your list is excellent. (Williams alum here haha.)
RIT
My son majored in art studio/art history at Williams. It’s an excellent program: well supported on campus with wonderful faculty and facilities. The department is closely aligned with the three world-class museums on or near the campus and well connected to the New York art and museum world.
Some other LACs with good studio art and art history are Wesleyan, Kenyon, Hamilton, Haverford, Vassar, Conn College, Skidmore, Pitzer. Smith if you are female. Conn College, Skidmore and Smith might be safeties or mid-to-low range matches.
Brown’s own art department is very good. Still selective, but not as crazy as the Brown/RISD program. Also Yale.
Be sure to submit an art portfolio with your application.
Although not a LAC, Tulane University might fit your bill. Also, I imagine that New Orleans would be a great place in which to be an art student/artist.
Look into Skidmore
Williams, yes, great faculty and resources but that’s the case with many top LAC’s. I’d also highly value the experience at Weselyan, Skidmore, Vassar, Bowdoin, actually any school with a good museum on campus with a varied collection and exhibition schedule is a huge plus to one’s experience as well.
Thanks so much for all your help!
OP you have rec’d excellent advice above. The only other school I would add (not exactly an LAC but has flexible cross registration between schools and was one of artist S’s fvorites) is Wash U.
Here is the number of arts majors per graduating class, the size of the graduating class and the percentage of General Arts majors in the graduating class (from the IPEDS database). Yale and Tufts also have masters programs and Brown and Tufts have joint degree programs with The Rhode Island School of Design and The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, respectively.
Bard…………147/471……31.2%
Skidmore……50/684………7.3%
Tufts…………86/1389………6.2%…75…Masters…SMFA
Williams………29/523………5.5%
Col College… 25/528………4.7%
Kenyon…18/468…3.8%
Vassar………… 21/625………3.4%
Bates……………15/444………3.4%
Conn Col…13/462…2.8%
Hamilton………10/500………2.0%
Bowdoin…………9/491………1.8%
Wesleyan………12/733………1.6%
Colby………….…7/477……1.5%
Brown………….18/1594………1.1%…RISD
Yale…………… 14/1344….……1.0%…59…Masters
Tulane…………13/1712……….0.7%
Although Bard has its fair share of visual arts majors, and it’s a great place to study Studio Art, I think the data in the IPEDS must be misleading. I went to look at the report and indeed it does say 147. However, it doesn’t list any theater, photography, art history, (non performance) music, or film majors - and I know for a fact that there are plenty of them - so I think that the 147 must be the entire “Arts” division at Bard which encompasses all the various disciplines, rather than just Visual Arts.
^ USNWR essentially confirms that for Bard, grouping Visual and Performing Arts majors together at 31% of the student body.
Not sure where the 12 graduates a year stat for Wesleyan is coming from. It’s Common Data Set does not separate theater, dance and film majors and lists 11.5% of the class under the standardized category for all common data sets, “Visual and Performing Arts”.
@circuitrider here is my source, which breaks it down in more detail. The largest subgroup (as one might expect) is film with 34, second is drama with 14.
https://nces.ed.gov/collegenavigator/?q=wesleyan+university&s=all&id=130697#programs
Not sure what this information suggests with regard to whether a particular college has a strong art department.
@Mastadon - That NCES/IPEDS site is interesting and I can see its uses as an excellent resource. But, it does seem to slice and dice the course offerings in arbitrary ways, and can give skewed results for an individual school. For example, it does not list any Art History majors for Williams, yet we know that it’s one of the most popular art subcategories offered at that college of 2000 students in western Massachusetts.
OTOH, for some reason, the Wesleyan art history majors are bracketed out separately from the “art, general” category. If you combine the two (as they’ve apparently done for Williams) the total comes out to 25, making them 3.0% of the graduating class and the second most popular art subcategory after film. The 95 total visual and performing arts majors among the 733 seniors at Wesleyan (it’s been higher) compares to 42 graduating arts majors at Williams College.