A Message from the Dean
Welcome to the College of Fine Arts.
The College of Fine Arts is the home of the arts at The University of Texas at Austin, the flagship public university for the State of Texas.
We are a creative community of faculty, staff, students and art lovers and patrons devoted to teaching and learning, research and practice in the visual arts, music, theatre, dance, design and arts education. We are also one of the leading arts presenters and exhibition centers in the City of Austin and Central Texas, including our nationally renowned Texas Performing Arts, our impressively vast Landmarks public art collection and our contemporary art venue, the Visual Arts Center.
Our faculty, staff, students and patrons alike value the arts as foundational to our society and as indispensable platforms and tools for making sense of the deepest and most significant aspects of our lives. We are also expansive in our understanding of creativity as crucial to innovation in science, health and business.
We are committed connoisseurs of the histories that have shaped the artistic traditions and repertoires from which our disciplines have emerged. We are also spirited creators looking for ways to tell new stories and to transform our surroundings through the development of new technologies or novel applications of old ones. We engage with new perspectives and embrace historically unattended ones in our rigorous advancement of new discovery in research about the past, present and future of the arts and design across the globe.
Whether you are coming to us to advance your own artistry and research or to enjoy the work of our impressive faculty, students and guest artists, we welcome you into our community of creative thinkers and doers.
Our university’s motto is “What starts here changes the world.” I cannot think of a more vivid example of this generous ambition and bold ethical stance than the transformative work the arts advance in imagining and making worlds in our studios, stages, exhibition spaces and designed environments (physical as much as virtual). We imagine the world anew with every creative and critical gesture we advance, and we invite you to join us in this adventurous journey to see the world through the rigor and wonderment of the arts.
Welcome!
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean of the College of Fine Arts