Mission Statement

The mission of the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts at Indiana University Bloomington is to foster an aesthetic and intellectual environment in which the highest level of creativity and critical thinking in the visual arts are studied, practiced and learned. Visual art is a record and testimony of ideas manifested by cultures across time and space. To continue and extend this human endeavor, professionals in the field of artistic practice and research engage others who will be able to capture the present, envision the future, and make it visible. Indiana University School of Fine Arts, comprised of both Studio and History of Art Departments, advocates a balance of training in the practice, theory, and history of visual arts in order to understand and enhance the human sensibility and its diverse potential. Visual thinking and its creative expression are essential to the intellectual framework of a liberal arts education. Creative activity in Studio Art and scholarship in History of Art are enriched by the sophisticated dynamics of learning in a liberal arts context and are challenged by the rigor of knowledge generation in a leading-edge research university.

Goals of the School of Fine Arts

To increase student’s knowledge of the expressive, intuitive, intellectual, and structural aspects of visual language through observation, exploration, discovery and practice.

To stimulate intellectual curiosity and its translation into visual art through memory, reason, and imagination, while balancing craft with personal expression in traditional and new media.

To develop students’ expertise in traditional practices in a learning environment that encourages experimentation and invention.

To promote the visual arts as a significant form of communication and expression throughout human history.

To support the College of Arts and Sciences’ sophisticated, strategic liberal arts education that cultivates critical thinking and creativity necessary in the twenty-first century.