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Academic Programs
 Hollins has long had a reputation for strength and innovation in the arts. Hollins art and art history majors go into the world prepared to make their marks as artists, art historians, museum curators, art educators, and volunteers.
Strong Faculty of Recognized Artists, Scholars, Teachers
The strength of Hollins' art department comes from a faculty of recognized artists, scholars, and dedicated teachers, who take pride in the success students encounter as they work through aesthetic and scholarly problems. With individual faculty exhibiting regularly in each media - drawing, painting, photography, and printmaking, and ceramics -- the department has one of the most comprehensive programs offered at a small university. The Fiske Guide to Getting into the Right College lauds Hollins as one of only 15 small universities strong in art and design. The art history faculty is actively engaged in research and publication in classical art and archeology, medieval art, and 19th- and 20th-century European and American art. We emphasize women's history as depicted through images of women in art, women artists, and their patrons.
Our Graduates' Job Record
The program's strength is demonstrated by the number of graduates working in prominent galleries, museums, and auction houses - Knoedler Gallery, PaceWildensteinMacGill Photography Gallery, the Metropolitan Museum, Colonial Williamsburg, the Smithsonian, Christie's, Sotheby's, the National Trust for Historic Preservation - and the quality of Hollins graduates who are practicing artists. Many graduates are continuing their education in M.F.A. and Ph.D. programs at prestigious institutions -- University of Chicago, University of Virginia, Williams College, S.M.U., Indiana University, Virginia Tech School of Architecture, Pratt Institute, for example.
Special Programs
Short Term
As part of the January Short Term, faculty (and
students) develop speci al courses for an intensive one-month period of study. Topics have included: relief sculpture, color dynamics, book arts, moviemaking, American furniture, creative drawing materials, women in art, monotype printing, the figure (drawing and dance), pinhole photography, building a Gothic cathedral, and alternative processes in photography.
The art department frequently organizes trips abroad. The past several trips have been to Italy, where students have studied and sketched art treasures in Venice, Florence, Rome, and several small towns in central Italy.  The travel/study program in Italy gave students the chance to live and work for a month with a group of dedicated artists, in a culture where living and art are joined and where Giotto, Piero della Fancesca, and Raphael created some of the most incredible works of western art. Students stayed at the Crispolti Institute, a renovated 13th century monastery in Todi, Italy. This Medieval town is in central Italy, about half way between Rome and Florence, which makes it easy to take art study day trips. Hollins professors Jan Knipe and Bill White planned the program in conjunction with visiting artist Martha Armstrong.
During Short Term 2006, students and art faculty went to Madrid and Barcelona. Artists and art lovers spent nearly two weeks in the cities of Madrid and Barcelona, visiting museums and galleries, including the Museo del Prado, Museu Thyssen-Bonemisza, Sorolla Museum, Museum of Joan Miró, Picasso Museum, and the Dali Theatre Museum. When they weren’t sketching, they sampled the cuisine, drank in the scenery, and worked on their Spanish.
SHORT TERM 2006 PHOTOS (courtesy of Linda White)
Internships
Hollins' extensive internship program during the January Short Term gives students a special opportunity to practice what we teach. Art history major Brandy Culp parlayed her internship with the Metropolitan Museum into a job after graduation. Sallie Wiggins, a studio art major, joined the Knoedler Gallery staff after her internship there. Approximately 40 students intern each year at such sites as museums, auction houses, galleries, video production studios, architectural firms, fashion houses and magazines, advertising agencies, photography studios, interior design firms, printmaking studios, and historical foundations including: Sotheby's, National Gallery of Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, High Museum of Art, Art Forum Magazine, The Art Institute of Chicago, Houston's Museum of Fine Arts, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Maryland Historical Society, Winterthur Museum, Harper's Bazaar, Anne Klein.
 Study Abroad
Exciting travel/study opportunities allow students to explore periods of history through the great collections of the world. Many art majors take challenging courses offered through Hollins' most popular abroad programs in Paris and London. Others choose to study in Greece, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Mexico, or Spain.
The January Short Term also features a variety of international travel experiences. January 2001 offered the opportunity to study and travel in Italy. Students worked in the studio, visited Rome, Florence, Sienna, Bologna, Ravenna… saw the newly restored "Legend of the Cross" by Piero della Francesca, and visited Narni where Corot painted his famous landscape with the Roman bridge. Students have studied German cinema and visited film studios in Germany and have traveled to Greece to study art and archeological sites.
Frances Niederer Artist-in-Residence
Each spring semester, a well-known artist resides on campus. He/she has a studio where students observe works in progress. The artist teaches a special seminar open to all students (even first year students) and works with all senior studio majors in preparation for their senior show. He/she also exhibits recent work in the Hollins gallery and gives a public lecture, so there are plenty of opportunities for students to exchange ideas with the artists. Artists in residence have included: James McGarrell, 1997; Jack Beal, 1998; Sondra Freckelton, 1998; Marjorie Portnow, 1999; Martha Armstrong, 1999; George Nick, 2000, Nancy Spencer '69 and Eric Renner, 2002, Barbara Grossman, 2003, and Gillian Pederson-Krag, 2004, Ruth Miller, 2005, and Jan Baltzell, 2006, Michael Ananian, 2007, and Holly Roberts, 2008.
Visiting Lecturers
Recent lectures by well-known art historians have included Linda Seidel of the University of Chicago, Madeline Caviness of Tufts University, and Brunilde
Ridgway of Bryn Mawr. Each year, Hollins holds the Classics Symposium and the Virginia Art History Colloquium, which addresses current art history topics such as "Women, Death, and Power." Artists exhibiting in our gallery also give public lectures. Additional art lecturers have included Barbara Kruger, Debra Rosenthal, Jed Perl, Janet Fish, Sally Mann '74, M.A. '75, and Carrie Mae Weems.
Richard Wetherill Visual Arts Center
This 60,000-square-foot visual arts center houses beautiful, light-filled studio spaces for painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and clay; electronic classrooms for the study of art history; large gallery space for rotating exhibitions; exhibition space for student work; photography and film facilities, including an auditorium for lectures and films; and private studio and study areas for all art majors.
Eleanor D. Wilson Museum
Hollins' art department opened the first gallery in the Roanoke Valley in 1948. Innovative exhibitions continue today in the Eleanor D. Wilson Museum located in the Richard Wetherill Visual Arts Center.
The Eleanor D. Wilson Museum is a Museum Partner with the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (VMFA). This designation will help bring distinguished exhibitions and other arts programming to the campus. Jeffrey Allison, Paul Mellon Collection Educator for Statewide Programs at the VMFA, said, "It's remarkable to have a high-quality facility on a college campus that will offer the same attributes as any major museum in the country." The museum features three interconnected galleries of different sizes arranged as separate rooms with a common entry for security and flexibility. The combination of galleries and climate-controlled storage areas is enabling Hollins to begin building a permanent collection of important works, realizing a dream of the donor, Eleanor D. "Siddy" Wilson '30.
Hollins Graduates: Where are they now?
Art graduates from Hollins put their creative powers to work for them, landing positions with a variety of impressive museums, galleries, and advertising agencies; pursuing their education at graduate school; or becoming fine artists. Here's a short list of what Hollins alumnae are doing:
- Curator of decorative arts, Birmingham Museum of Fine Arts
- Architect, Charlottesville, Va.
- Curator of maps and prints, Colonial Williamsburg
- Photography department, Smithsonian
- Vice president and auctioneer, Sotheby's, New York
- Interior designer, Hancock & Hancock, Chicago
- Historic preservation consultant, Winston-Salem
- Assistant in European paintings, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
- Assistant director, PaceWildensteinMacGill Photography Gallery, New York
- Graduate school in New York at the Bard Graduate Center, in a yearlong historic preservation/urban planning program in NYC and Paris sponsored by Columbia University, and in Sotheby's program in American art; also at American University, Northwestern University, Williams College, and University of Texas at Austin
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