Department of Art

Professors, current students, and alumni, show work in exhibitions, share new projects, and engage with new audiences.

MFA Candidates and BFA Senior Thesis students welcomed visitors to discuss their art and see works in progress, during Art in the Open on October 30th, 2025.

Photo: Meredith Forrest Kulwicki

Classroom Showcase: ART308 Drawing II, 2/24/24

4/22/24

Students in Professor Joan Linder’s ART308 Drawing II: Material & Mark class did a body-scale mark making exercise, experimenting with charcoal and full body movements across paper on the classroom floor.

Visiting Artist Speaker Series

9/29/23

The Fall Visiting Artist Speaker Series brings important artists, designers, and thinkers to the University at Buffalo. (Artist Shantell Martin giving an artist's talk at the Center for the Arts on North Campus in 2017)

Undergraduate Studies

4/28/20

The University at Buffalo’s Department of Art is housed within New York State’s premier public university. Our programs offer a unique convergence of contemporary art, technology, and critical discourse.

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Western New York High School Art Exhibitions, Now Open!

Public reception Th. January 29, 5-8PM, in the Center for the Arts Atrium and both Department of Art galleries.

WNY High School Student Art Exhibition in the Lower Gallery

Winter Blue: High School Art Teacher Exhibition in the Project Space

The Department of Art Statement of Acknowledgment, Inclusion and Equity

Areas of Study

The Department of Art at the University at Buffalo is dedicated to developing creative and academic skills in studio art, post-studio art, graphic design, aesthetics, critical theory, and art history. Since its founding, our Department has been committed to shepherding innovative approaches and new practices. We empower our students to represent their unique visions within a contemporary cultural environment.

Drawing
4/18/23
Explore line, shape and form in a variety of mediums on a diversity of scale. Work in large rooms with skylights and spotlights at dimensions that are only limited by your imagination. Here, we explore everything from still-life and life drawing to anatomical and architectural drawing. Our award-winning instructors are here to help you refine and expand your skills.
Biological Art
7/22/24
Coalesce: Center for Biological Arts is a hybrid studio laboratory facility dedicated to enabling hands-on creative engagement with tools and technologies from the life sciences. Coalesce offers multiple short term BioArt Residencies to visiting artists each year.
Print Media
9/30/19
Print Media students work in an atmosphere of intellectual exploration and investigation, with comprehensive print facilities for developing and refining their personal vision.
Emerging Practices, Art and Technology
11/5/21
Explore and shape the future of art. Emerging Practices, Art and Technology
is a multidisciplinary studio practice that builds on knowledge of emerging technologies such as interactive multi-media, electronic installation, networked telematic communication, robotic art, three-dimensional simulation, biotechnology, and algorithmic image synthesis.
Painting
9/25/19
Painting is continually evolving, producing an enormous variety of responses to philosophies and technological developments. These changes have always been part of the discipline, whether it meant moving from the frescoed surface to wood panels or from hand-mixed paints to digital techniques.
Graphic Design
7/16/24
Today’s digitally networked culture and industry demand increasing levels of visual literacy. Communication in the 21st century is an ecology of information, knowledge production, and visual rhetoric that shapes the way people understand our world.
Sculpture and Installation
11/20/24
The sculpture and installation program encourages students to investigate a multitude of methods, materials, and conceptual approaches. Students in this area employ a range of fabrication techniques and technologies to engage with the material, technical, aesthetic, and theoretical dimensions of contemporary sculpture practice.
Art History
10/31/24
In today’s broad and immersive visual world, the Art History program is committed to studying the visual arts as tools for exploring and decoding culture.
Photography
3/31/25
Photography is concerned with producing creative artists and professional photographers who are fluent in a wide variety of photographic productions, techniques, and critical concerns.
Performance
11/10/21
The currency of performance-based art lies in its capacity to be utilized in the most extreme, urgent, and quotidian of situations, incorporating live and mediated means.

Department News

Professor Rothenberg's installation as stage for interactive audio visual performance
2/6/26
Art Professor Stephanie Rothenberg and her collaborator Suzanne Thorpe’s exhibition “Serenades for Settling” at the Burchfield Penney Art Center will be the setting of an Interactive Audio Visual Performance by Paulina Velázquez Solís and Travis Johns.
Art Professor Hughes designs NHL Sabres Black History Celebration Crest
2/6/26
Sabres unveil Black History Celebration crest, designed by George Afedzi Hughes, UB Art Associate Professor.
"Modern Primitive" drawings by UB Art Professor shown at Smithsonian
2/6/26
Abdi Osman, MFA, UB Assistant Professor of Practice, has drawings from the series "Modern Primitive", in the exhibition Here: Pride and Belonging in African Art, at the National Museum of African Art, a Smithsonian musuem in Washington D.C.
BIOMES solo exhibition by BFA Alum, explores the microscopic through art
1/26/26
2023 BFA in Studio Art Alumnus, Emma Stanton, presents a solo exhibition of artwork at the Crucible Art Collective, on Buffalo's Westside.
Photo Students collab, reception for the "Buffalo Remembrance Project"
1/23/26
The following students from the University at Buffalo Department of Art, Photo Area, contributed to this photography project: Eric Maurice, Lily Borer, Simone Tallchief, Sydney Jackson, and Thomas Walsh.

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Center for the Arts Events

UB Overarching Calendar