ART TABLE: Every Tuesday at Noon in the Dining Hall

Susan Shaffer, John 8:12, watercolor, 2009

As a student interested in Visual or Performing Arts, Art History, Archeology, or Classics, the Department of Fine Arts offers you a number of distinctive opportunities, including:

• Studio Facilities: Beautifully renovated dance studio, two well-lit drawing and painting studios, a new wet darkroom, a comfortable seminar room with large couches and giant critique wall, a 20 station Dell computer lab featuring the Adobe Creative Suite, a ceramics studio with two electric kilns and five wheels, a printmaking studio with a mechanized press, and semi-private studio space for seniors.
• Summer Artist-in-Residency Program: Permits artists from across the country to visit Wilson for two-week residencies. While here, they engage current art students in conversation about work, art and life as an artist. They conduct formal and informal critiques with students and fellow residents, and have the opportunity to exhibit in the Wilson College Bogigian Gallery or perform in either the Apenzeller Dance Studio or Laird Hall.
• Visiting Artists: Each semester, professional visual and/or performing artists are invited to campus to talk about and perform their own professional work and meet with students to discuss student work. They come with varied backgrounds as professional artists and educators working in a variety of media, and bring new perspectives to current Wilson students.
• The Bogigian Gallery: Two exhibitions are hosted each semester, with a concentration on women artists. The schedule includes the annual juried Student Show held at the end of the Spring semester and a Biannual Faculty/Staff Show, along with a variety of local, regional and nationally known artists.

Sumayal Shrestha, Geisha, digital image, 2007

• The Hunnicutt Gallery of Classical Antiquities. A wonderful collection of artifacts from Egypt, Greece, Rome, and other great civilizations of the Western world. Students have the opportunity to study the collection in depth, and are invited to physically engage the objects.
• The Orchesis Modern Dance Ensemble: Sponsors and performs a concert at the end of each semester, presenting a broad range of historical and modern dance. All Wilson students are eligible to enroll in Orchesis.
• Regular field trips: To museums, galleries, and artist studios in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.
• Major areas of study in Studio Art and Art History, Minors in Dance, Archaeology and Music.
  - An outstanding group of dedicated, diverse and broadly published and exhibited full-time faculty.
  - A senior Capstone project for studio majors designed to prepare the student for life after Wilson as a graduate student or working artist.
• Independent Study: Allows upper level students to design their own courses. Such courses have included: Defining the Portrait, Experiments in Collage, Concepts of Modern & Contemporary Art, Portfolio Preparation and Contemporary Concepts
• Special majors: Is designed with major area directors. Past special majors have included Dance and Graphic Design.
• Internships: Has included positions as Photographer at Busch Gardens Amusement Park in Williamsburg, VA , an Administrative Assistant at The Walters Art Museum in Baltimore,  and a graphic designer with a firm in  Washington, DC.
• Preparation for graduate study: Fine Arts Majors have enrolled in recent graduate programs at Mt. St. Mary's University, Slippery Rock University, and Temple University.

Department Chair: Bob Dickson
717-264-4141  ext. 3400

What current students are saying about their experience in Fine Arts and Dance

What alumnae are saying about their experience in Fine Arts and Dance

Concentrations in Studio Art and Art History