Art Major & Minor | Luther College

Build your skills creating and communicating art through sight, materials, and culture.

Why Study Art?

How do you understand what you experience? How do you communicate what you think, feel, see, and imagine?

Studying and making art enhances perception. It engages reason, meaning, and possibility. It motivates and inspires. It creates dialogue and community. It registers dissent and solidarity.

Art is personal yet universal. Art takes shape with cultural differences but often centers on shared human experience.

Why Study Art at Luther?

Art is driven by outside ideas. Luther’s liberal arts community will help you build a world of ideas to fuel your artistic practice. Because you’ll be learning across disciplines, you’ll be drawing inspiration from biology, psychology, literature—or wherever your interests take you!

In addition to helping you fill a deep well of ideas and inspiration, the art program at Luther helps build your technical skills in a variety of mediums. It also teaches you to think creatively, critically, and ethically.

Scholarships

As an art major, you’re eligible for several scholarships available only to art majors. These are based on merit, involvement, and financial need.

Dedicated Faculty

Whether you want to study studio art, art history, or create your own path, Luther’s art faculty will guide you through our program, helping you explore and discover the kind of art that matters to you.

Private Studio Spaces

As a senior art major, you’re guaranteed a private studio space to help you grow as an artist and prepare your senior project.

What You’ll Learn

Art Major

As an art major, you’re encouraged to follow your calling. The program has fully outfitted studio areas in ceramics, graphic design, painting, printmaking, and photography (digital and darkroom).

Luther’s introductory courses engage you in the meaning and understanding of visual discourse. You’ll use this knowledge to develop and make artworks. The advanced courses will help you prepare for your senior project exhibition work.

You might also decide to pair your major with a related minor and/or double major with a focus on your specific career goals. Art majors commonly pair with: visual communication, art history, biology, creative writing, identity studies, management, museum studies, psychology, social work.

Art Minor

As an art minor, you’ll take two introductory courses and four four-credit courses in art, at least two at the 200 level and one at the 300 level.

Curriculum

woman with black hair, wearing a mask, holds up a pen-and-ink drawing

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The art department encouraged me to explore many different interests and facets of my work and myself. ... The art faculty taught me how valuable it is to have patience with self-growth.

Jasmyn Linn '21

Art and Visual Communication Major

Stories

Careers and Outcomes

More than 96% of Luther College art majors are employed, continuing their education, seeking advanced degrees, or engaged in meaningful volunteer work within one year of graduating. Many Luther art alumni find success in careers in fine arts and commercial arts.

Career Fields

Practicing fine artists
Art education
Art therapy
Art curation
Art gallery and collections management
Studio photography
Architecture (structural and landscape)
Graphic design and other digital arts-related careers

Audrey Fashimpaur ’23

Audrey Fashimpaur was one of 500 students from across the country selected for the US State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship Spark program to learn Mandarin; she went on to spend a year in Japan, teaching English. An art major with minors in chemistry, biology and art history, she plans to enter the medical field.

Ultra Mega Mega

Ultra Mega Mega is a pop-up art show at semester’s end to showcase our students’ creativity in visual art, theatre, and dance. Paintings, sculpture, photos, prints, dance, theatre, and more fill the Center for the Arts for one evening. Student creators are on hand to share and answer questions about their art.