Department of Art

The Department of Art at California State University Long Beach has a rich history, being the first NASAD accredited public university Department of Art in California and the first in California to offer the MFA degree. We are one of the largest and most comprehensive art programs in the United States, public or private, comprised of forty-five full-time faculty and approximately sixty part-time faculty serving more than two thousand majors in eleven Art programs.

By the year 2003, the Department of Art had become, in essence, an art school within a major urban university. Why is size so important? Size enables us to have specialist faculty in a broad range of programs. In fact, we offer 15 separate degree programs along with two certificate programs — programs that students can easily move between and among.

The major philosophical hallmark of this department has always been our faculty’s unshakable commitment to teaching both theory and skills, a belief that the two are an inseparable pair. As a faculty we believe theory without skills or skills without theory both lead to weak art. Students here are challenged to hone their hand skills and minds equally. We hope this web site will give you a taste of our world and make you want to visit.

At CSULB, Art students will find:

  • Faculty who are entirely accessible, on both a full and part-time basis.
  • Completely integrated studio, art history, and art education programs.
  • A strong foundation program consisting of introductory studio and art history courses that all majors must take — studio, art education, and art history majors alike.
  • State-of-the-art, well-equipped studios — as part of a $14 million renovation of Art facilities, the department spent $1.4 million on equipment for studios and classrooms throughout the department over the past three years.
  • Studios and classrooms open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
  • Six art galleries that are completely devoted to student art. In these galleries, students mount more than 180 exhibitions per year.
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