While the courses offered by the department continually evolve in response to new mediums, new technologies and new ideas, faculty in our department continue to focus on what is most essential: development of the individual student.
Prospective Students
VIDEO: Tour our facilities (YouTube)
VIDEO: Department overview with Kelly Helmstutler Di Dio (YouTube)
VIDEO: Maddie Barnes '22 (YouTube)
On Display
If you are a studio art major, you’ll find opportunities to view and display artwork in The Colburn Gallery in Williams Hall , the new Michele and Martin Cohen Hall for the Integrative Creative Arts, or in other galleries situated throughout the University's many public spaces. The Senior Exhibition is an annual celebration and showcase of work created by graduating studio art and art education majors and minors. Every student who enters work for the Senior Award competition will have their work included in the Senior Exhibition.
Bringing Outside Perspectives
The department attracts leading artists and critics to UVM who lecture and exhibit their artwork while interacting directly with students in roundtable and individual critique activities. Many of these visitors come through The Mollie Ruprecht Fund for Visual Arts. The creative work of Ruprecht visiting artists has often been integrated into the course curriculum.
Location is Everything
Vermont is known for a culture that honors the arts and the creative mind. Located between the Green Mountains and shores of Lake Champlain, UVM’s environs has inspired many generations of artists. UVM also enjoys close proximity to some of the best institutions, collections, museums and galleries New York, Boston and Montreal. You’ll also discover a vibrant arts community close to campus—besides UVM’s Fleming Museum, the Burlington area is home to Burlington City Arts and the South End Art Hop, an annual arts festival in the city’s south end.
At Home with the Arts
For most UVM students, the housing experience takes place in Learning Communities, which are designed to bring students with a shared interest together and provide a feeling of home. Live and learn with other poets and painters, dancers and dramatists in the Arts & Creativity Learning Community. In this vibrant community you are free to explore your interest in the visual and performing arts by expanding and deepening your connection to creativity and expression.
Internships Pave Way to Grad School
Art and art history students find plenty of opportunities to apply classroom learning in research projects or internships. Alaina Hendrickson ’18 knows UVM’s Fleming Museum from the inside out. The art history and French double major completed two internships with curatorial staff there. “First, I researched the museum’s Chinese dragon robes for the current Asian art exhibition,” she says. Then she assisted curator Andrea Rosen in research for “The Impossible Ideal: Victorian Fashion and Femininity,” an exhibition that opened in the fall of 2018. She is attending American University in Washington, D.C. to pursue a master of arts in art history.
UVM experience leads to competitive internship at Christie's in NYC
Having transferred to UVM from New York University her junior year to study art history and writing in a supportive academic environment and beautiful location, Barrie Knapp '19 says her brief time at the university exceeded her expectations—thanks, in large part, to the relationships she was able to forge with faculty. In August the New Jersey native will return to the Big Apple for a competitive internship at Christie’s, where she’ll gain valuable hands-on experience at one of the world’s premier auction houses as an Asian Art Department intern. But first, Knapp plans to enjoy her last summer in Burlington entrenched in the local arts community as she continues her work as a curatorial intern at Burlington City Arts. “I’m passionate about art and the ways in which it represents, unifies and impacts different cultures,” she says.
