SAN ANTONIO COLLEGE . Visual Arts Department
saclogo

visual arts

Visual Arts: About Us
General Information, Geographic Proximity and Mission

The Department
In 1955 the San Antonio College Art Department was established with an annual enrollment of fewer than 300 students and one full-time art instructor. The building assigned to the department was a refitted garage.
Photograph of the Visual Arts and Technology Center, San Antonio College Presently, the Visual Arts Center, with an annual enrollment that tops 3000, occupies a 32,000 square foot building which opened in 1991. Here faculty and students enjoy a learning environment that integrates a two story instructional gallery with visual arts studios, lecture theater, visual resource intranet, and multi-media production workstations. The studios for ceramic arts are nestled in the carriage house of the Koehler Cultural Center, an historic Victorian mansion just one block from the Visual Arts Center.
A proven art program for transfer students, the Visual Arts program has produced numerous successful artists in the past several decades that established their creative roots in our program. Our students successfully transfer to four-year universities and schools of art throughout the U.S. Please visit our Portfolio Day and Alumni page for a list of some of our alums and the institutions where they have completed their degrees.
Geographic Proximity
San Antonio College and the Visual Arts Center is centrally located just north of downtown San Antonio. Our campus is easily accessible by interstates 10, 35, and US hwy 281. The San Antonio Museum of Art, McNay Art Museum, Art Pace Foundation for Contemporary Art, Southwest School of Art and Craft, Carver Community Cultural Center, Guadalupe Cultural Arts Center, Blue Star Art Space, Joan Grona Gallery, and other contemporary art galleries, are all within an easy five to ten minute drive of the Visual Arts Center. Many students who attend Trinity University, University of the Incarnate Word, and Our Lady of the Lake University find the Visual Arts transfer courses to be convenient, effective, and economical. The University of Texas at San Antonio downtown campus is only five minutes from the college and the main campus is a twenty minute drive north on IH-10.
Mission

The Visual Arts program exists to provide a high quality education in the Fine Arts.

Fine Arts:The primary mission of the Fine Arts program is to educate our students through academic, pragmatic and aesthetic investigations of the disciplines of art history, drawing, design, sculpture, ceramics, painting, photography, printmaking, and art metals.

  • Our academic mission is to provide visual art education as a means for the development of aesthetic sensibility and visual literacy, and to provide access for visual learners to higher education. Our comprehensive approach includes a synthesis of the multicultural history of visual expression, contemporary issues, the acknowledgment of the interdisciplinary academic nature of art, and individual aesthetic investigations through research and hands-on media involvement. Course offerings are in accord with the Visual Arts Transfer Curriculum recommended by the Texas Association of Schools of Art and the Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board. New 2 + 2 agreements with area and state institutions and perennial scholarships designated by our faculty to national art institutes prove the currency of the fine arts curriculum.
  • Our aesthetic mission is to help students gain experience and develop confidence in engaging individual creative processes, making judgments that require critical thinking skills, and understanding these means of individual empowerment as a life-long developmental process.
  • Our pragmatic mission is to provide an intellectually stimulating , healthy, secure, and well equipped learning environment that includes state of the art image technology. The physical plant, built in 1991, has improved the overall efficacy of our mission. This evolution along with the continued up-dating and refinement of our curriculum has positioned the Fine-Arts program in a leadership role in the academic community and community at large as we meet the challenges of the twenty-first century.

 

San Antonio College, 1300 San Pedro Avenue, San Antonio, TX 78212-4299 Phone: 210/486-0000, Technology Hotline: 486-0777
Access to Student/Visitor parking via Dewey and Main St..
One of the Alamo Colleges. The Alamo Colleges are equal opportunity employers. District Helpdesk: 485-0555
For special accommodations or an alternate format, contact the San Antonio College disABILITY Support Services at 486-0020.
Alamo Colleges Department of Public Safety
San Antonio College. Updated 08/17/2009