Fine Arts

Degrees Offered

Master of Arts
Master of Fine Arts
Master of Music
Doctor of Musical Arts
Doctor of Philosophy

Facilities for Graduate Work

In addition to the academic departments, the College of Fine Arts includes the Performing Arts Center and the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art. These components provide University students and the Austin community with opportunities to attend art exhibitions, plays, operas, ballets, recitals, and concerts by internationally renowned artists and companies. The proximity of Austin to Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, and Fort Worth places the major art collections and dramatic and musical events of those cities within a few hours' drive.

Performing Arts Center. The Performing Arts Center includes the Nancy Lee and Perry R. Bass Concert Hall (three thousand seats) and the Ralph and Ruth McCullough Theatre (four hundred seats). Nearby are the Kate Broocks Bates Recital Hall (seven hundred seats) with its three-story Visser-Rowland tracker organ, the B. Iden Payne Theatre (five hundred seats), and the Theatre Room (two hundred seats). Support facilities include rehearsal rooms, paint shops, scene shops, metal shop, prop shop, costume shops, and administrative offices.

Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art. Founded in 1963, the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art (formerly the Archer M. Huntington Art Gallery) is an important center for scholarship, research, and professional training in the visual arts. Students have opportunities to gain firsthand experience in academic and museum careers through formal internships and work with curators and faculty members on exhibitions, educational programs, and conservation activities. The museum's permanent collection includes more than twelve thousand works of art that span the history of Western civilization from antiquity to the present. Hightlights include the Suida-Manning Collection of Renaissance and Baroque Art, the Mari and James A. Michener Collection of Twentieth-Century American Art, the C. R. Smith Collection of Art of the American West, and the Contemporary Latin American Art Collection. Holdings of prints and drawings, available for study in the Clark Print Room, consist of more than ten thousand works on paper dating from the fifteenth century to the present. Also on view at the museum are antiquities from ancient Greece and Rome. The William J. Battle Collection of Plaster Casts features life-size cast replicas of the great masterpieces of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture.

Fine Arts Library. Located in the E. William Doty Fine Arts Building, the Fine Arts Library contains materials on art, music, theatre, and dance. The art collection includes materials on all art movements and schools, the philosophy of art, and aesthetics. Artists of all periods and nationalities and studies of their works are represented, as well as all media and techniques.

The music collection contains materials that support instruction and research in music performance, music composition and theory, music education, music history and literature, and ethnomusicology. The historical periods covered range from antiquity to the present for all materials. Emphasis is on the European tradition, with a growing collection in music of other cultures. Scores and sound recordings are collected for all major composers.

The theatre collection concentrates on performance, especially play production, theatrical design, playwriting, drama education, and dance. Materials on magic, circuses, carnivals, burlesque, vaudeville, and pantomime are also included. In the collection are major plays originally in English or in translation; the emphasis is on those written since 1920. The primary location for plays, however, is the Perry-Castaneda Library.

Areas of Study

Graduate study is available in the following areas: in the Department of Art and Art History: art history, studio art, and art education; in the School of Music: music performance (including conducting and opera), music education, musicology (including ethnomusicology), and music composition and music theory; a jazz emphasis is available in approved areas; and in the Department of Theatre and Dance: teacher training, acting, directing, playwriting, theatrical design, theatre technology, drama and theatre for youth, and historical, theoretical, and critical studies. Information about these programs follows; further information is available from the graduate adviser of each program.

Fine arts courses: F A

Contents |  Chapter 1 |  Chapter 2 |  Chapter 3
Chapter 4 |  Chapter 5 |  Appendix

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