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The Department of Fine Arts, located in the Gairdner Fine Arts Building, offers a unique opportunity for professional training in the Fine Arts in conjunction with all the benefits of a university campus. These include the stimulus of a broad intellectual environment, the facilities of a good library and a balanced programme of social activities.
The curriculum in fine arts leading to the degree of Bachelor of Fine Arts is primarily intended to develop creative ability in drawing, painting, photography, printing, sculpture, and various combinations of these media. Courses in art history and seminars in contemporary art issues foster an understanding of art and visual culture from pre-historic time through the modern and post-modern periods.
For students who wish to focus on art history, the Department offers a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major or minor in art history. For students who wish to incorporate a study of fine arts with other academic disciplines, the Department offers a Bachelor of Arts degree with a major or minor in fine arts.
In the Fall of 1995, the Department introduced a new curriculum that emphasizes the relationships between media and contemporary theoretical discourse in art and visual culture.
The Gairdner Building provides ample, well lit studios for students in painting and drawing and fully equipped printmaking studios for students of lithography, intaglio and relief printing. Additional facilities in other locations on campus provide darkroom, lighting and finishing studios for students in photography; and welding, stone carving, clay, plaster and woodworking studios for students in sculpture.
In cooperation with the Owens Art Gallery and Sackville's Struts Gallery, the Department offers a Visiting Artists Programme with presentations and workshops by Canadian and international artists, art critics and curators. In their third or fourth year of study, students travel to one of the major art centres in the United States (New York City) or Canada (Toronto, Montreal or Ottawa) to view the exhibitions and collections of art at public museums and private galleries.
Exhibitions and related events -- performances, films, and artists' presentations--offered by the Owens Art Gallery remain central to students studying fine arts. The extensive collection of paintings, drawings, prints, photographs and sculpture of the Owens provides an essential resource to students in art history and studio courses. The gallery also serves the University and community in Sackville and the Atlantic region.
The teaching of art at Mount Allison University can be traced back to the opening of the Women's Academy in 1854 and since then has continued to be an important part of the liberal arts curriculum. In 1941 Mount Allison was the first university in Canada to give a B.F.A. degree in the visual arts. Until 1965, when the Department moved to its own quarters in the Gairdner Fine Arts Building, courses in fine art were taught at the Owens Art Gallery.
Photographer, typographer, and Mount Allison University Fine Arts department head Thaddeus Holownia was featured on CTV’s Live at 5, the Maritimes' #1 news magazine show on January 24, 2011. Watch his story here.