UC Berkeley Art Practice

News

Why does the world often seem like a web of coincidences? These questions lie at the heart of Synchronicity, a project by Data Art Prof. Greg Niemeyer that seeks to illuminate the strange, invisible threads tying our lives to the natural world and to each other.

Tree of Life at Santa Rosa Memorial

Art Practice Senior Sophia Lavrov’s mural commission for the Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital comforts patients and families in the ICU.

Applicants for the undergraduate Art Practice major: visit the Bachelor of Art page to learn more.

Applicants for the MFA in Art Practice: the deadline for the 2025-26 school year is Dec. 15, 2024. We will hold online info sessions about our program Oct 2 and Nov 7 (see event listings below). UCB Graduate Division Application is here.

A rewarding degree with a fine arts focus

The Art Practice Department has a fine arts focus and requires rigorous studio work of all its majors. Our areas of studio concentration include: painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture (wood, metal, ceramic, and mixed media), digital photography, installation, performance, social practice, and video. Select classes in comics, experimental animation, and sound art are also taught.

We do not specialize in commercial art fields such as character animation, illustration, graphic design, logo design, fashion, or UX design. Students seeking these specific disciplines are encouraged to find an alternate program.

UC Berkeley’s Art Practice Department provides rigorous hands-on, conceptual, and critical studio art training within a world-renowned public research university.

Students develop a cross-media understanding of fine art practices in a global context and gain valuable experience for a wide range of professional careers within contemporary art and culture. 2D, 3D, and time-based studio courses, research seminars, and professional development courses provide essential skills within conceptual and critical frameworks. We offer a four year Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree and a two year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree. Our courses service approximately 500 undergraduate students each semester (including approximately 150 Art Practice majors), and 12 graduate students across a diverse range of disciplines.

Located in the California Bay Area on the unceded territory of the Huichin Ohlone people, our program is deeply connected to the region’s complex historical legacies and is engaged in its creative possibilities. Our diverse faculty consists of internationally acclaimed artists working across a range of media, and with multiple research interests that closely link the Art Practice Department with other university departments and research centers, including the Berkeley Center for New Media, the Center for Race and Gender, the Center for African Studies, Global Urban Humanities, the Berkeley Food Institute, the Townsend Center, the Institute for South Asia Studies, the Center for Middle Eastern Studies, and the LGBTQ Citizenship research cluster, among others.