The Bay Area's broad spectrum of artistic activity is mirrored by the Art Department. A large, professionally active art history and art studio faculty establishes the creative and scholarly nucleus for the teaching program. As many as thirty regular and part-time faculty teach over 75 courses each semester. The Department is accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.
The Art Department at SF State is an integral part of a dynamic College of Creative Arts comprised of Broadcast & Electronic Communication Arts, Design and Industry, Cinema, Music and Dance, and Theatre Arts. Added to the extensive educational resources provided by a large urban university, the artistic activities clustered within the College offer a special palette of human and technical re-sources. The Art Department has an impressive collection of prints and paintings, and the Art Department Fine Arts Gallery presents a changing schedule of exhibitions throughout the academic year.
The facilities include a 3,000 square-foot professional gallery, the Martin Wong Undergraduate Gallery, the Alumni Hall exhibition space, a visual resource collection containing over 300,000 images, and computer laboratories. The Fine Art Gallery offers students the opportunities to work in research and curatorial programs. The Department also maintains a collection of prints documenting a long history and wide variety of printmaking processes.
Few institutions can match the context for the study of and production of art at San Francisco State University's Art Department. San Francisco's rich urban environment offers art students a wealth of cultural activity--from the highly innovative to the well-established. Major museums, galleries and alternative art spaces ensure an ongoing dialogue in all areas and histories of art. The Bay Area is known for supporting quality investigations in many intellectual and creative endeavors, for its varied lifestyles and ethnic groups, and for its diverse neighborhoods, many of which support art related community institutions.
