Transform Your Vision into Impact.
The Department of Art at Stony Brook University is a dynamic community of artists, scholars and students bringing together creative practice, critical inquiry, and the study of art, media and visual culture within one of the nation’s leading public research universities.
Our internationally recognised faculty are artists, scholars, writers and researchers working across fields including contemporary art and art history, AI and emerging technologies, environmental and socially engaged art, Indigenous art and knowledge, media and visual culture, interdisciplinary and material practices, and global and decolonial approaches to art history. Their work is exhibited, published and presented nationally and internationally, bringing active creative and scholarly research into our classrooms and studios.
Students work across traditional and emerging forms, from painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking and photography to moving image, sound, digital media and computational practice. Across the department, we encourage experimentation, critical thinking and collaboration, creating opportunities for students to connect artistic practice and scholarship with other disciplines and with the wider cultural landscape of Long Island and New York City.
Academic Programs
Graduate Programs
GRADUATE PROGRAMS
SBU ART: Mission & Evolution
The Department of Art at Stony Brook University has consistently been at the cutting
edge of developments in art history, criticism and practice. Here, in the 1960s, Lawrence
Alloway coined the term “Pop Art,” Allan Kaprow invented the “Happening,” and the visiting artist Nam June Paik taught students to see the recently invented
technology of “video” as a creative medium. Since that time, we have continued to embrace new directions in the study and making
of art, at the core of an integrated curriculum for undergraduates and for graduate students.
In art history, these range from interdisciplinary perspectives in 19th and 20th century art criticism to more non-canonical topics: the scholarly analysis of visual and material culture, including the moving image
and digital media, global artistic traditions and contemporary diasporic art. Our
studio artists work in a wide spectrum of traditional and new media, from sculpture, print-making, painting and photography, to digital media, installation
art, and performance.
Undergraduates can major in Art History and in Studio Art, and can enroll in the Digital Arts Minor.
Our graduate degrees are the M.F.A. in Studio Art, and the M.A. and PhD in Art History and Criticism.
These programs have worldwide reputations: currently Art has 4 international students
from 4 countries. All our students, and our faculty, are well served by the resources
of a large research university: our emphasis on critical theory has led to a natural connection to both Philosophy and Women’s Studies, just as our
concern for performance has with Music and Theater Arts. The field of visual and material culture has given rise to collaborations between Art and the Humanities Institute, CLCS,
and a range of other Humanities and Social Sciences Departments; and our concern with media has led to joint work with Computer Science in the College of Engineering.
To learn more about the university's history, please visit the library's website via this link.
