Our list of top art schools

[kevinl2046]

I am having a hard time finding a good list of art schools. I looked at the USNEWS Fine arts rankings but those were for graduate schools. So how about we start a list here? I think it will be best to divide our list into art schools and university art departments.
Try to give a short summary if possible.

I'll start..

Great Undergraduate Art Schools and Departments

Art School:

Pratt
SCAD
Parsons
Art Institute of Chicago

University Departments:

Carnegie Mellon University
http://www-art.cfa.cmu.edu/

Carnegie Mellon School of Fine Arts This school provides tons of vocational training so students are ready for any type of art work once they graduate. There is also top notch engineering and science departments.

Williams College
http://www.williams.edu/art/

Small Liberal Arts college with a very intense curriculum. Top ranked school in the nation with relatively strong art department in liberal arts colleges.

Washington University St. Louis
http://artsci.wustl.edu/~artweb/washUSoa/

5000 or so undergrads, so I would expect the university's art school doesn't have a homogenous student body. A new, gigantic art building is planned to be constructed, but I don't know how long that will take.

[Jon Roark]

I attended Fashion Institute of Technology (http://www.fitnyc.edu/html/dynamic.html) in Manhattan in the mid 1980's. I found it to be an excellent experience. I'd already graduated from a liberal arts college which was a great experience, but an art degree from that sort of environment was virtually worthless. Liberal arts is a great place to develop the thinking side, but terrible to develop drawing or painting skills. There just isn't enough time to put into drawing classes and the students tended to take on this attitude of, "I've had drawing 101 and 201, so I know how to draw." even if they didn't really know how to draw. I appreciate both experiences greatly. I felt that many of the students in the program at FIT ended up with excellent drawing skills, but really needed to go on to a liberal arts experience because they hadn't developed the intellectual side of things (drawing and painting 8 hours a day doesn't leave much time for reading and studying). The thing I truly respect about FIT is the fact that the instructors were expected to be working in the field, not out getting doctorates in education. We were learning from professionals who knew their way around the industry and that was a wonderful experience. It was not the pedigree driven club that higher education can be at many liberal arts colleges. One of my teachers told me that the students had a portfolio day at the end of each semester and the day after that, the teachers had a portfolio day because they had to show they had been working also. It was a great place for me!

[Danny]

Is there one (Good Art School) in Texas .

[billbtx]

Originally Posted by Danny

Is there one (Good Art School) in Texas .

Yes.

Many. Check with the Texas Association of Schools of Art. www.tasart.org

Contact the President or one of the board members. They can each give you their selections (each, of course, from their individual perspective)

I lean toward Sam Houston Univ. (my alma mater) Huntsville, TX
University of North Texas, Denton, TX
UT Austin
Texas State University, San Marcos

I have friends or acquaintances at each of them and have visited most of the other Colleges in the state at one time or the other and know that many of the other ones not mentioned are also top notch. The individual faculty are actually more important than the program(except as a flashy note on your resume). So your research is only beginning. But it is certainly worth the effort. Find the best school, with the best faculty and you acquire a solid education. The real work is up to you anyway.
cheers, bill b.

[chewypaints]

I attended Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, NYC in the early eighties. I was in the Graduate Communication Design (Graphic Design). I lived on campus for the first 2 years. The student body is diverse and worldly. Most students are very serious about their studies and art... they also learn while playing... creative party themes and the famous bed race. My professors worked actively in the field of Graphic Design and definitely knew their stuff. Most of my classes met at the Manhattan campus and sometimes at the professors' studios. The internship program provides great opportunities in one of the greatest cities.

At first glance the campus is a bit intimidating, surrounded by a big black iron fence. It's on the border of Bedstyvestant, that's Spike Jones' (of movie fame) territory.

[fieldarchy]

Originally Posted by Danny

Is there one (Good Art School) in Texas .

Yes, UNT is a good Fine Arts school. They have one of the toughest programs I've ever heard of. I'm on my second BA (third degree overall) getting it in Studio Art at University of North Texas and it's the most demanding program I've been in yet. Way tougher than my Master's in Information Systems ever was.

[Briar Rose]

That's because back in the day Texas had the worst schools. Now they changed everything, and they make it challenging.


Is it the program that makes it good, or the size and space of the classroom, or what?

However, there are teacher's that just give asignments, and then never teach or show techniques at all schools. You knever know which one you'll get.

[b123]

Originally Posted by Briar Rose

That's because back in the day Texas had the worst schools. Now they changed everything, and they make it challenging.


Is it the program that makes it good, or the size and space of the classroom, or what?

However, there are teacher's that just give assignments, and then never teach or show techniques at all schools. You never know which one you'll get.

I would also suggest caution in choosing an art school. I recently gave a one-week painting workshop to a first year art student at one of the top San Francisco art schools and a few weeks later he decided to drop out of art school. He told me that he had learned more in that one week than he had learned in the whole of the previous year at art school! What does that say about the state of teaching in some of our top art schools?

I personally decided not to go to art school but to try and find the best painters I could and spend time with them, and then supplement this one-on-one training with specialized courses in topics like notan, the elements of design, figure drawing, portrait painting, and other specialized topics. It was difficult to find a lot of this knowledge at times but eventually I did manage to dig it out. The biggest problem was that no-one has been teaching it for years now, at least not since the 60's. It cost just about the same as going to art school but in the end I think I got much better training. (... no degree but that was not important to me since I already had a degree in another subject).

My personal advice to anyone starting out would be to start with the old tried and proven academic method of training and build up a foundation of drawing skills with plaster casts for a year, and then get experience with the live model for another year at least. Only work with color after a year or two of this basic training. Then supplement this basic training with color training as it was taught by Henry Hensche and Sergei Bongart in the mid part of the last century (this was something that was not in the old academic curriculum by the way). Then after you have acquired these basic skills work on design and composition. You could also do these things in parallel. Then after all this work on expression and brushwork - the components that will distinguish your work from everyone else.

It is my opinion that with a foundation like that, you could become a master painter but that without it you can never become a good painter. The same foundation is also very useful for anyone working in the film industry.

On the other hand if you want to do contemporary art, you don't need much of a foundation. In fact you really don't need much skill, and with the right marketing you could become famous - all you need is creativity and to 'express yourself''. That is what most of the art school teachers will advise.

But if you look at a lot of the reaction to so-called contemporary art, you will find 'the emperor's clothes' effect mentioned a lot. I suspect that the end of the contemporary art movement and concept art, where innovation is valued and quality not valued, is not far away. Oddly enough contemporary art is really only an extension of what Duchamp started in 1917 with his urinal piece, so the principal idea behind contemporary art is really quite dated! It is hardly contemporary at all. Only the momentum and self-interests of the art establishment are keeping this now dated movement going. It is this same momentum and self interest that has resulted in the problems with current art education.

Hope this helps!

[Mandy Valin]

I was considering Pratt, but I dont like the idea of going to school in Brooklyn for two years, so I think I'm going for the University of the Arts in Philidelphia, has anyone heard of it?

[BETIOTK]

Originally Posted by Alde

I was considering Pratt, but I dont like the idea of going to school in Brooklyn for two years, so I think I'm going for the University of the Arts in Philidelphia, has anyone heard of it?

Have you ever really visited Brooklyn? Its a fantastic location for the school for 2 reasons, Brooklyn has a very 'homey' familiarity, yet it is still the city, and there are very artistically inclined areas near-by such as DUMBO (down under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass). I went recently to visit some schools, and walked around DUMBO which is said to be the equivalent of SoHo, very cool shoppes and there was a girl w/ easel and all painting the historic warehouses said to go for a pretty penny as lofts and artists spaces. The Pratt campus itself is only about 20 mins from 'the city' meaning the hustle bustle of tourists and what-have-you in Manhattan. If you haven’t visited, I urge you to take a trip and do so, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

I’m not certain which school I’m going to try for. I’ve done fashion design for the past year and a half - meaning my designs were shown at DC nightclubs - but now I’m much more interested in using various mediums of art, such as what Escher did, or painting corsets, in an effort to create ‘wearable art’, which presents a certain conundrum: do I study fashion, art, or can I do both? I was seriously looking into Parsons, then Pratt because they deem their fashion degree as a ‘fine arts’ degree, but I’m definitely open to suggestions.

[writerhoward]

The best art school in Philadelphia is PAFA (if your interest in in the Fine Arts).
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Originally Posted by Alde

I was considering Pratt, but I dont like the idea of going to school in Brooklyn for two years, so I think I'm going for the University of the Arts in Philidelphia, has anyone heard of it?

[pmerritt]

This is such a cool thread

The schools I'm most interested in are public universities, not art schools, though (I'm not completely sure if I want to do art for a living yet)... has anybody heard anything about the art departments of the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) or Auburn University? Or maybe other state universities down in the southeast U.S.?

[osidianrose]

Originally Posted by pmerritt

This is such a cool thread

The schools I'm most interested in are public universities, not art schools, though (I'm not completely sure if I want to do art for a living yet)... has anybody heard anything about the art departments of the University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa) or Auburn University? Or maybe other state universities down in the southeast U.S.?

East Carolina University

[1_4lvl]

I live in Cincinnati, Ohio. Localy we have 2 pretty high ranking schools, DAAP and Miami U. The Cincinnati Art Accademy is pretty good too(but I do not reccomend it because of location)

I've talked to scouts from many schools, but PRATT, CCA and SCAD interest me the most. My biggest concern is student-teacher involvement. I don't want to go to a school where there's no fundamental focus, and where students are allowed to create whatever work they want without justification. I want decent critiques, and bluntly honest proffessors. (As in, I want to be told up front if they think my work is crap).

But I don't seem to get much information on this aspect.

[David81]

Hey Alde, University of the Arts has a good reputation and is in a good area of Philadelphia. Did you apply yet and what do you want to major in?

David