As an art major at Augustana, you will join a community of artists who are passionate about their work and eager to help others develop and grow. Our beautiful state-of-the-art facilities are always available and professors are often working beside you in the studios. Undergraduate art majors can choose between a Bachelor of Arts with multiple tracks to choose from or a Bachelor of Fine Arts.
Study the Visual Arts at Augustana University
- Sculpture
- Painting
- Ceramics
- Drawing
- Graphic Design
- Art History
- Printmaking
- Photography
- Art Education
You will also have the opportunity to study abroad creating stained glass in Germany, painting in Peru during Interim, or visiting the great museums of Europe or New York on a spring break course. Students often choose to study philosophy, languages, history, the sciences or music alongside their studio courses.
We are a community of involved artists at Augustana and you are very important to us. We will get to know you well when you come study with us. We will empower you with an essential foundation in design and give you the tools to build a successful creative career in art. We will provoke your imagination and help you in your search to understand and discover yourself and the world around you through art. We will engage you in discussions that matter to you and nurture the profound questions that define and connect us.
Our recent graduates are employed in a range of creative fields, becoming artists, creative directors, animators, printmakers, sculptors, architects, freelance, creatives, graphic designers, technologists, professors, teachers, photographers, while others go on to graduate studies to pursue a Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) and Masters of Architecture (M.Arch.) programs across the United States, and more!
Our art program emphasizes studio work in a variety of disciplines and also provides hands-on learning opportunities to organize and curate exhibits, implement effective graphic design and work within the Sioux Falls arts community.
Our art majors gain invaluable real-life experience with internship opportunities across the United States and Europe. These internship experiences have had a significant impact on the career paths of our students and the well-being of entire communities.
Read more about the learning environment in our departmentAugustana art students have gone on to a wide variety of career and graduate successes.
Within the greater context of Augustana University’s mission, the Art Department develops students’ awareness of the diversity of human cultures and ways of visual thinking and expression, both past and present. This provides a strong foundation for engaging today’s complex and ever-changing global world.
Augustana’s Art faculty provide a deeply supportive environment for students to develop their studio practice, to deepen their capacity to ask questions, to broaden their expressive potential, to probe unknowns, and provides a cognitive framework for understanding their own creativity in relationship to the history of art and culture, and contemporary conversations in art practice. The studio process foregrounds the interplay of intuition and response as students interact with physical materials and the elements and principles of art and design. Studio classes are hands-on and process oriented. Students make decisions and problem-solve through a material to discover or learn something about themselves and the world they live in. Class critiques largely parallel this same process of intuition and response in a group dynamic of dialogue and questions.
Art faculty work within the guidelines of the National Visual Arts Standards and the National Association of Schools of Art & Design to develop the kinesthetic and visual thinking skills of all people of the Augustana community who are seeking art for personal wholeness, professional development in the studio, vocations in the creative industries, and as teachers. The Department believes that visual awareness increases human awareness, which in turn contributes indispensably to the development of a reasoning and imaginative human being. Through studying the history of art and the art of other cultures, manipulating structures of design while working in the various studios, and critically analyzing works of art, students become more aware of how art functions in the greater community. The department stresses a strong foundation in drawing and design as a basis for all visual art processes.