ABOUT VISUAL ARTS

Visual Arts
Accolades & Rankings

Top Ranked UX Program

Top Ranked Graphic Design Program

CU Denver Digital Design received top honors in the country as top school for User Experience (UX), User Interface (UI), and Human Computer Interaction (HCI)from Animation Career Review  in the 2024 Program Rankings!

  • #1 in Colorado among private and public schools
  • #5 among schools in the Southwest

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Top Ranked Animation Program

CU Denver's 3D Graphics & Animation again makes the list of top nationally-ranked animation programs from Animation Career Review in the 2023 Program Rankings!

  • #1 in Colorado among all schools
  • Top 20 Nationally among Public Schools and Colleges 
  • Top 10 in the Southwest
  • Top 50 Nationally among schools offering an Animation related BFA 

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Top 10 Public Illustration Programs

CU Denver's Illustration program received top honors in the country from Animation Career Review in the 2022 Program Rankings!

  • Top 10 Nationally among Public Schools and Colleges (#9, top 15%)
  • #3 in the Southwest
  • #1 Public School in Colorado 

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In Visual Arts at CU Denver, the city becomes our canvas, industry leaders become professors and a passion becomes a profession. We do our best work designing in a digital lab or putting paint to canvas in a studio. Our students have access to state-of-the art digital labs, sculpture studios, industrial equipment and darkrooms. They find opportunities at the Denver Art Museum, in galleries across the Front Range and at digital studios like Pixar. That’s how the College of Arts & Media unites the ability to create with the means to succeed.

 

CU DENVER VISUAL ARTS MAJOR EMPHASIS AREAS:

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3D Graphics & Animation

Preparing students to work in a growing variety of fields that use animated digital computer graphics, 3D Graphics & Animation is operated by the nationally ranked and recognized CU Denver Digital Animation Center. 

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Art History

Art History studies visual cultures, spanning ancient to contemporary art and across diverse media. Students hone skills in research, visual analysis, and communications, while understanding and expressing art in its social and cultural contexts.

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Art Practices

Art Practices is a professional degree in studio art, where students gain interdisciplinary arts skills and focus on concentrations in selected areas, providing students with dynamic knowledge of materials, methods, and concepts to make them competitive in the global contemporary art world.

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Digital Design

Through an interdisciplinary approach, Digital Design produces designers who use technology in innovative ways and understand the cultural impact of digital technologies to produce solutions for branding, advertising, social causes and to solve human problems.

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Illustration

Illustration is a practice in conceptual illustration, digital illustration, rendering, perspective, painting, exhibition preparation, professional practices and the use of various artistic and illustration techniques.

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Photography

Developing skills in traditional and digital photography while refining creative and conceptual approaches to the medium, Photography emphasizes artistic development integrating the history of photography, critical theory, and contemporary practice.

Explore Photography

CU DENVER VISUAL ARTS MINORS:

In addition, to the six major programs listed above, the Visual Arts Department offers many fantastic minor degree programs. These minor can be added on to any of the visual arts majors or can be added by CU Denver students with majors outside of the Visual Arts Department. Here are the minor degrees offered:

2023 CU Denver Visual Arts BFA Thesis Show at Redline

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GUEST SPEAKERS

Visual Arts News

Maria Buszek is the Inaugural Speaker at the International Center for Photography’s Series, Dismantling the Gaze

Art Historian Examines Gendered Nature of Art-Making, Art-Viewing, and “The Male Gaze"

CAM Communications | The College of Arts & Media Feb 9, 2019
July 18, 2018- Maria Elena Buszek, Ph.D., associate professor of Art History at the University of Colorado Denver spoke at the International Center for Photography (ICP) launch of Dismantling the Gaze, a series which considers looking, power, and visual culture in the #MeToo moment.

Buszek shared hundreds of years of visual culture in one brief presentation that concisely illustrates the gendered power structures deeply embedded in cultural production to a standing room only crowd in New York City.

At CU Denver, Buszek teaches  modern and contemporary art in the Visual Arts Department.  Her recent publications include the books Pin-Up Grrrls: Feminism, Sexuality, Popular Culture (Duke University Press Books, 2006) and Extra/Ordinary: Craft and Contemporary Art (Duke, 2011). She has also contributed writing to numerous international exhibition catalogues and scholarly journals: most recently, essays in Dorothy Iannone: Censorship and the Irrepressible Drive Toward Divinity and Mark Mothersbaugh: Myopia, and Andrea Bowers. Buszek has also been a regular contributor to the popular feminist magazine BUST since 1999. Her current book project, Art of Noise, explores the ties between contemporary activist art and popular music.
Tags: Art History gender Maria Buszek visual culture

College of Arts & Media

CU Denver

Arts Building

1150 10th Street

Suite 177

Denver, CO 80204

303-315-7400

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