Art Practice

University of California, Berkeley

This is an archived copy of the 2019-20 guide. To access the most recent version of the guide, please visit http://guide.berkeley.edu.

Overview

UC Berkeley’s Department of Art Practice provides professional art training within the context of a world-renowned public research university. We offer innovative, interdisciplinary courses leading to BA and MFA degrees. As practicing visual artists, the faculty members of the Department of Art Practice hold as our principal goal the representation and analysis of human experiences through creative research in visual art. In making art, we seek to expand the boundaries of our cultures and the limits of our perceptions through rigorous experimentation with art forms, media, and content. Considering human experiences from an experiential standpoint, our experimentation leads to questioning our beliefs, rituals, and philosophies as well as our social, economic, and institutional structures. In teaching, our mission is to help students pose profound questions by developing their creative voices, mastering their practices, relating to their audiences, and connecting to histories of art and cultures.

Four goals underlie the teaching in the Department of Art:

  1. To advance the body of knowledge of human experience through aesthetic investigation.
  2. To help students learn to think visually.
  3. To help students understand the strategies that artists have devised to deal with aesthetic problems in both traditional and nontraditional methods of art making.
  4. To help students develop a creative intelligence through practicing a visual arts discipline.

Facilities and Resources

The Department of Art Practice facilities include six studio spaces: Printmaking StudioPainting and Drawing StudioWood and Metal Sculpture Studio, and Digital Media Labs (for photography, video, audio, and animation productions) in Kroeber Hall and the Ceramics Studio and Project Lab in Wurster Hall.

Located in 116 Kroeber Hall, the Worth Ryder Art Gallery (WRAG) has served as the department’s cultural and artistic hub for graduate and undergraduate students, faculty, and the Bay Area arts community for over 40 years. The gallery serves primarily as an exhibition platform for emerging contemporary art practices and methodologies.

The Garron Reading Room, located in 346 Kroeber Hall, houses a collection of books, periodicals, and digital media.

Undergraduate Programs

Practice of Art: BA, Minor

Graduate Program

Practice of Art: Master of Fine Arts (MFA)

Visit Department Website

Courses

Practice of Art

Faculty and Instructors

Faculty

Allan Desouza, Associate Professor. Photography, contemporary art, Art Pedagogy, performance, postcolonial studies, Contemporary African Art, South Asian Art.

Asma Kazmi, Assistant Professor. Transdisciplinary, performative, relational works.

Greg Niemeyer, Associate Professor. Art, film studies, digital media installations, photography.
Research Profile

Brody Reiman, Associate Professor.

Stephanie Syjuco, Assistant Professor. Art, sculpture, ceramics, social practice, craft, activism, public art, feminism, capitalism, communes, material culture, informal economies, black markets, hacker culture, detournement, digital culture, the industrial revolution, Russian Constructivism, Arts and Crafts Movement, The Bauhaus, The Berlin Wall, design culture, architecture, brutalist architecture, urbanism, survivalism, archives, libraries, museums, museum display, modernity, postcolonial studies, labor history, American history, globalization, revolutions, cargo cults, the Philippines, Asian American studies, empire, textiles, fashion, ethnography, trade routes, science fiction, afrofuturism, camouflage, surveillance technologies, DIY culture, zines, punk rock, maker culture, kittens.
Research Profile

Anne Walsh, Associate Professor. Video, performance, audio, photography, text.

Lecturers

Nathan Kwame Braun, Lecturer.

Aida Gamez, Lecturer.

Michael Hall, Lecturer.

Jamil Hellu, Lecturer.

Randy M. Hussong, Lecturer.

Sahar Khoury, Lecturer.

Christopher S. Kubick, Lecturer.

Carmen Lang Merino, Lecturer.

Stephanie F. Lie, Lecturer.

Masako Miki, Lecturer.

Jill S. Miller, Lecturer.

Indira M. Morre, Lecturer.

Craig K. Nagasawa, Lecturer.

James S. Pitt, Lecturer.

Elise A. Putnam, Lecturer.

Erik Scollon, Lecturer.

Stacy Jo Scott, Lecturer.

Azin Seraj, Lecturer.

Jenifer K. Wofford, Lecturer.

Emeritus Faculty

Jerrold Ballaine, Professor Emeritus.

Squeak Carnwath, Professor Emeritus. Art, painting, printmaking.
Research Profile

Anne Healy, Professor Emeritus.

James Melchert, Professor Emeritus.

Mary Lovelace O'Neal, Professor Emeritus.

Richard Shaw, Professor Emeritus.

Katherine D. Sherwood, Professor Emeritus. Art and Disability.
Research Profile

David Simpson, Professor Emeritus.

Brian Wall, Professor Emeritus.

Contact Information

Department of the Practice of Art

345 Kroeber Hall

Phone: 510-642-2582

Fax: 510-643-0884

Visit Department Website

Chair/Associate Professor

Greg Niemeyer

341 Kroeber Hall

niemeyer@berkeley.edu

Department Manager

Erik Nelson

340 Kroeber Hall

Phone: 510-642-4190

erik_nelson@berkeley.edu

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