The Art School provides an education to approximately 275 majors and minors in a variety of artistic traditions through a rigorous academic environment, challenging studio experience and ample pre-professional opportunities.
We do not require an art portfolio for admission into any of our programs. We support the philosophy that a studio art program should be open to all interested students at DePaul in recognition that when a student is ready to engage in art-making that our doors will be open. We encourage our students to participate in our established internship program woven within the city of Chicago, and we additionally support student options of extended artistic study and/or expanded career possibilities by selecting second/majors and/or minors in related areas of study such as: Anthropology, Communication and Media, Public Relations and Advertising, History of Art and Architecture, Sociology, Environmental Studies, Modern Languages, Illustration, Creative Writing and Poetry, Theatre Studies (for non-Theatre School students), Graphic Design, Art-Related Service Learning, Animation, Psychology (which can lead to graduate study in Art Therapy), Game Design, Digital Cinema, Marketing (for non-business students), and Secondary Education in Visual Arts.
Students can take advantage of the small class sizes and personalized instruction from studio faculty. Among area universities, the school now boasts two of the finest computer graphics laboratories dedicated solely to media art and fine art. Our facility features a darkroom, two computer graphics laboratories, wood and metal working shops, and separate studios for sculpture, printmaking, design, painting and drawing.
See the The Art School's Program Book.
Mission Statement
It is the goal of The Art School to develop and maintain an educational program in which the students learn the historical and creative possibilities of visual culture. Visual art is a basic and universal category of human expression and communication. The faculty in the school are visual specialists who analyze, organize, and give form to ideas and information. The curriculum emphasizes research and conceptual thinking, creative problem solving and the development of specific skills. Across the concentrations of the school, the common aim is to impart these diverse methods, skills and problems to the students in order to provide a foundation for their understanding of visual culture in contemporary times and historically.
Whether in studio classes or design laboratories, the school strives to develop an understanding of art as an individual act of creative self discovery as well as a social process. This conceptual focus allows for an emphasis on the creative and verbal exchange of ideas which in turn fosters a more critical and productive response to visual culture. We believe that this mission is essential for enabling our students to achieve their full potential in a modern, visually-oriented and technologically sophisticated world. Thus, we see our goals as a natural extension of the Vincentian tradition of empowering critical, empathetic, socially engaged and creative human beings.