History and Tradition

The Department of Art has been flourishing at Hunter College for over forty years. Hunter's art programs take place within a public college noted for its strong liberal arts tradition. All classes are held in New York City, the world's foremost art center. Hunter College is close to a range of resources unmatched anywhere for the study of fine arts and art history: a host of outstanding museums such as The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Museum of Modern Art, The Frick Collection, The Whitney Museum of American Art, and The Guggenheim Museum, innumerable galleries, and many specialized research libraries. For many years, these factors have attracted a strong faculty in all areas of the arts—studio art, art history, and theory and criticism. Hunter's renowned faculty of practicing artists and art historians teach students by offering a strong academic foundation and by forming a bridge to professional experience in the arts. These are the factors that make the Graduate Art Programs at Hunter College unique.

When Hunter College opened its doors in 1871, only women attended the "normal" school. These women were trained to be teachers in New York City's public school system. Over the years Hunter College changed dramatically. Early in this century Hunter became a liberal arts college. In the 1920s, an art department was established that included two disciplines: studio art and art history. By the 1950s the department added graduate programs and many important artists, historians and critics became members of the faculty. Artists from the New York School - including Robert Motherwell, William Baziotes, Richard Lippold, Gabor Peterdi, George Sugarman, Fritz Bultman, Ray Parker and Ad Reinhardt taught at Hunter. These artists were joined hy established critics and curators: Morris K. Smith, William Rubin, Mirella D'Ancona and Leo Steinberg, to name a few. During the 1960s the Hunter faculty expanded to include many more artists, historians and critics. E.C. Goossen, Tony Smith, Vincent Longo, Ralph Humphrey, Lyman Kipp, Robert Morris, Doug Ohlson, Anthony Panzera, Julius Goldstein, Ron Gorchov, Antoni Milkowski, George Hofmann, Robert Huot and Janet Cox-Rearick joined an already illustrious faculty. In the 1970s and 1980s many additional prominent artists and art historians joined the faculty. This group makes up a vital, ever-growing Department of Art.

In the early 1980s the department acquired permanent gallery space to supplement an already existing MFA Projects gallery. The Bertha and Karl Leubsdorf Gallery at 68th Street and Lexington Avenue became a new and important aspect of the art department. This gallery added a practical dimension to art education by making it possible for the department to add courses in curatorial studies to the curriculum which culminate in professional exhibitions in which students participate in all aspects of the work.

The presence of distinguished practicing artists, historians and critics on the faculty give both the studio and art history students a multidimensionalcontext that allows each student to develop his or her talent. Hunter is renowned for its teaching staff of artists and scholars who are committed to weaving contemporary theory and practice into the existing fabric of art history. Theory never becomes so rarefied as to be divorced from the art object, nor is practice permitted to deteriorate from the expression of feeling that inherently states a theoretical position.

Understanding the evolution of art education from the early academies, which transmitted techniques from one generation of artists to the next, to approaches to art as problem solving, to our present expanded commitment to questioning the boundaries of art, leads to far more creative possibilities in art itself. This attitude makes the location of the study of art crucial within the liberal arts university.

The vitality of the Hunter Graduate Art Programs continues to challenge the artists and scholars who teach here today and the students whose active involvement in their education is key to their growth as artists and scholars.