Study Fine Arts at School of Visual Arts

SVA is a fine arts school located in New York City, the art capital of the world. Students pursuing a fine arts degree have the opportunity to pursue a variety of concentrations with the major, including sculpture, painting, drawing, video, installation art, computer art and print-making, and have access to more than 80 instructors. Request information at admissions@sva.edu to learn more about a fine art education at SVA.

It's a good time to be an artist in America. With the celebration of diversity, there is a healthy openness to free expression. The individual voice, one-in-a-quarter-billion, is a narrative of experience that has a fresh, new power.

Diversity, openness, individuality. At SVA, these values are required for the development of the artist. The tradition of the Fine Arts Department has always been to encourage students to find their creative voice in a range of disciplines and media. Sculpture, video, painting, drawing, installation art, computer art and print-making are all concentrations within the major. One multimedia course, Interrelating the Arts: Sculpture, asks students to connect sculpted pieces with poetry, video, painting and performance. We have even combined two areas into one. The newest program in Fine Arts, Sculpture/Video, invites sculptors and video artists to share the same studio and intermix their media.

We want you to find out who you are at SVA. You begin with a solid grounding in technique and then step out into experimentation. In figure drawing, for example, an accurate rendering of what's there comes before an abstract exploration of what the figure implies. From the second year on, you develop your hand, your eye and your point of view in a variety of electives, with the expectation that an artistic identity will emerge through different means of expression.

In the fourth year, you will be asked to write a paper on your final thesis work. Students have written their theses in many personal ways - you choose your own voice. What you get out of the experience is the chance to understand and articulate your intentions, to see the choices you have made and what they say about you as an artist. Being able to explain your work in words adds critical thought to your arsenal as a communicator. Clarifying who you are will also serve you well when you're ready to look for a gallery.

We help you cultivate communication skills as a social being: Networking is advised to take advantage of the rich opportunities inside and outside SVA. You could land a studio job assisting an instructor or a visiting artist, which could become access to a gallery, which could lead to your first show. Before graduation, we invite dealers and curators to an open house showcasing the year's work, a chance for you to make important connections.

You have access to more than 80 instructors in the studio department, a number unmatched in size and excellence anywhere else. These artists of stature are a vital part of the New York creative scene, whose work you can see in the galleries, museums and even the public spaces of the city. Connect with the one who inspires and supports your creative efforts the most - who you gravitate toward will help you find your own center.

As a growing artist, you could not be in a better place. All your study and practice takes place in Chelsea, the heart of the contemporary art scene in the city, where ideas, inspiration and opportunity are everywhere around you. Class visits to local galleries and studios of SVA alumni let you see what's happening in the burgeoning Brooklyn art scenes of Williamsburg and Dumbo. And of course, the great masterpieces of New York's museums can become familiar friends you visit on your own, or with the guidance of a faculty member.

Becoming a fine artist in New York is to see and feel the fluent dynamics of creation as a public phenomenon. As an interchange of ideas, art is commerce - it has to have something to pass on to others. You can't keep it hidden. Your individual gift, your voice, is given in the act of showing your art. We will help you find it and help you display it to the world.