BA Visual Arts

The Department of Visual Arts (DOVA) is concerned with the making of art as a vehicle for exploring creativity, expression, perception, and the constructed world. Whether students take courses listed under Visual Arts to meet a general education requirement or as part of a major in visual arts, the goal is that they will develop communicative, analytical, and expressive skills through the process of artistic production.

While the major in Visual Arts builds on the UChicago tradition of emphasis on critical thinking and the development, testing, and revision of ideas, we shift the emphasis to place paramount importance on critical perception in an environment that is now more than ever dominated by the visual. All of our Visual Arts courses underscore the fact that perception involves the complex interaction of the senses and the intellect as reflected in art and in our understanding of the larger visual world.