The mission of the Art Department is to increase knowledge of, and interest in, the visual and applied arts among a variety of student constituencies. In line with the College’s mission to engage students in learning, knowledge creation, and cocurricular activities that broaden their minds while giving them tangible skills to succeed in careers and life,  foster “an environment in which students learn the underlying principles of the humanities and the arts,” we aim to provide non-majors with a general introduction to the techniques, principles, and theory of art making and design skills; to the broader cultural significance of the arts in an increasingly global society; and to the history of human artistic expression in as broad a spectrum of modern and historical civilizations as possible. 

We want those students who go no further than our introductory courses to acquire an appreciation of a universal human activity that will enrich their lives as liberally educated adults, able to enjoy and contribute to the ongoing development of their own culture. For our undergraduate majors, we aim to provide a thorough concentration in the skills, vocabulary, and concepts of their specializations, at a level of excellence that will qualify them for employment as artists, designers, art historians, curators, and related arts professions, or for pursuit of graduate education.

Our graduate programs aim to contribute to the College’s mission to support students “to serve as innovative leaders in a diverse world that they make more equitable and inclusive. They provide sophisticated education leading to the highest degree obtainable for fine artists (Master of Fine Arts, the usual requirement for positions as college art educators) and, for art historians, the Master of Arts, which qualifies them for advanced positions in the fields of art history, museum work, and the commercial art world, or for pursuit of the terminal degree required for college art history educators (Ph.D.). Our faculty is composed of productive scholars and artists who are deeply committed to teaching. 

Beyond our own boundaries, the department sees its purpose as bringing to the broader College community the same awareness that we offer our non-majors: a sense of the visual and applied arts’ centrality to culture, the humanities, and universal civilization, inseparable from and relevant to many other disciplines.  In practice, this means cooperating with a broad variety of constituencies across campus with complementary interests and goals: programs from Art Education and majors such as languages, area studies, history, and media studies.  At the most extensive level of collaboration, our art history faculty actively serves the needs of the university-wide consortia Ph.D. program in art history–part of the College mission to be “a partner with the CUNY’s Graduate School.”  We employ Graduate Teaching Fellows from the Graduate Center (GC), and many of our Art History faculty teach in the Art History program there and serve as mentors for doctoral students in that program.  Our studio faculty and Design faculty and their advanced students cooperate on creative and educational public service projects with local institutions, such as the Queens Museum of Art, Flushing Town Hall, En Foco, Inc. and Penumbra Foundation.