While the concentration in the Visual Arts builds on the Chicago tradition of emphasis on critical thinking and the development, testing and revision of ideas, we shift the emphasis to place paramount importance on critical perception in an environment that is now more than ever so dominated by the visual. All of our Visual Arts teaching underscores the fact that perception involves the complex interaction of the senses and the intellect as reflected in art and in our understanding of the larger visual world. Teaching students to "see" critically through making images is as integral to our practice as textual analysis is central to academic practice. Our course of study develops a powerful set of means which allows students to become sensitive and consciously aware of phenomena such as the relative nature of color; the particular measure of space - both real and illusionistic; and the ways in which our perceptual experiences give meaning to forms in the visual field. As these means are acquired the visual world fuses with the world of ideas, becoming a site of aesthetic pleasure, philosophical inquiry, social critique, political activism and psychological understanding.

Core Curriculum
The pursuit of these insights in our studio core courses (Visual Arts 101-102) is exacting (see the College Catalogue for course description and sample problems). It is crucial that students learn the observational skills for making precise phenomenological distinctions in the constructed world and within works of art. These skills are acquired by making images/objects, by watching others make images, and through regular critiques in which student works are critically discussed by all members of the class. As students gain observational skills, they literally see their world differently, experience it differently, and, thus, think about it differently. The student it is hoped experiences an integration of seeing and thinking, and understands the potential of their perceptual systems as analytic and expressive tools. The discriminations learned through the heuristic processes of making are then taken to cultural sites such as the Smart Museum, The Renaissance Society, and The Art Institute, to the streets of Chicago with its rich architectural and urbanistic history, and to the powerful visual and spatial markers of our lives such as television and the great Chicago commercial emporia. Here the language the student discovered is used to critically examine and interpret both what are traditionally considered works of art and other cultural products. They enter into a critical exchange that describes the affect of a work and analyzes how the context and formal structure of that work determines the affect.

Additional Course Offerings
Once the basic language (color, space, line, figure ground, weight, mass, volume, form, composition, narration, etc.) is in hand, the student is prepared to tackle the intricacies of making expressive objects which communicate an understanding of their location in the world. Painting, photography, drawing, printmaking and sculpture courses provide students opportunities to understand the expressive potential of the visual world through a particular medium. In these courses they begin the process of learning to engage their imagination and articulate their insights through the physical limits and the language specific to that medium. Thematic courses such as "What's Love Got to Do with It?: The Genres of Romance" and other non-media bound courses such as Collaborative Art, Installation, Visual Construction of Memory, and Art and Experience are taught on occasion and can bring together faculty across disciplines (see the College Catalogue for sample course descriptions).

Visual Arts Concentrators
Visual Arts concentrators begin their investigation of the visual world through two required 100 level courses that explore two and three dimensional phenomena (either ARTV 10100 or ARTV 10200) and the relationship between theory and practice (ARTV 15000). In subsequent coursework students explore the expressive potential of various media, deciding upon one or a combination, which most fully supports the investigation of their ideas. At the end of their junior year concentrators take a required seminar which prepares them for their senior project. This seminar combines making images with written analyses of art objects in museums and galleries, and the reading of theoretical and historical material. This rigorous exchange helps develop the critical distance that allows the student to sustain the year long Senior Project, an independent inquiry in the studio. Weekly meetings with advisors examine specific issues raised by students' work. Projects are diverse in media (painting, drawing, books, sculpture, performance, installation, photography, film/video), ambition, and expressive and intellectual aims. They may, if properly justified, cut across disciplines and include the participation of advisors from other departments. Before graduation, projects are publicly presented in a group exhibition on campus and all majors participate in a final critique with the assembled Midway faculty.