Mission Statement

The UNC Charlotte Department of Art and Art History fosters innovative and thoughtful artistic practice, scholarship, and education.  As professional artists, designers, art historians, and art educators, our faculty enrich the experience of visual culture for our students and for the metropolitan area of Charlotte.  We contribute to local, national and international dialog through exhibitions, lectures, publications, and other forms of research and outreach.  By promoting critical thinking, we empower our students with the analytical and adaptive skills necessary to negotiate and contribute to increasingly complex and cosmopolitan visual world.   We offer expertise in the visual arts that is both interdisciplinary and intercultural; an expertise that supports a broadly based curriculum.  As a vital contributor to a public urban research institution, the Department of Art and Art History endorses strategies that both derive from our current strengths and nurture our future capabilities.

As you seek information about an academic course of study in studio art or art history, you may find these questions both personally relevant and indicative of the attitude of faculty and administration in the College of Arts and Architecture and the Department of Art and Art History at UNC Charlotte:

• Why do you study art or art history?
• How do you study?
• Do you think about art most of the day?
• Can art make a difference in our daily lives?  …the lives of others?  How?  How much?
• Why are most people afraid of what you do….or think about?
• Does art really transform people’s lives?
• Can art work inside other disciplines?
• Can artists learn how the rest of the world works?
• How do you learn a discipline?
• How is it that people will go great lengths to see art and yet in their own priorities think it is some form of luxury?
• How do you students affect what happens in this department?
• What is happening in art that we aren’t paying much attention to here?
• How do you know what is good?  Really good!
• Have you developed a language that explains what you do, why, and how?
• Do you spend time every single day on your discipline?

Programs of Study
All students at UNCC must earn a minimum of 120 credits to graduate
What is the difference between a BA in Art and a BFA in Art?
All undergraduate college degrees, the B.F.A. included, must have a general studies (liberal arts) component. The difference between a B.F.A. and a B.A. in Art is in the ratio between art and design, and general studies. In the B.A. in Art degree approximately 2/3 of the course work is in general studies, with the remainder in visual arts. In a B.F.A. approximately 2/3 of the course work is in the "creation and study of the visual arts," with the remainder in general studies. The B.F.A. is the appropriate degree for serious, motivated students seeking to become professional artists and designers, or graduate students in studio art.  The B.A. degree is recommended primarily for students seeking a double major or seeking a career in a field other than studio art.

BACHELOR of ART with an ART major(42 credits)
An entrance portfolio and a 2.0 GPA are required for admission
to the Art major.

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