Contemporary Art
Academics
Eligibility Requirements
- Drew student with junior or senior standing
- Current Art or Art History majors (students from other majors will be considered on a case-by-case basis)
- Have completed ARTH 306 – Early 20th Century Art
- Good academic and disciplinary standing
Program Director
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Semester on Contemporary Art
This 4-credit program is offered every fall semester, and students have the option of registering to go into the city on either Wednesdays or Fridays. Classes begin in late August and end in mid-December. This program is a mandatory course for Drew art and art history students.
Big Experiences Lead to Bold Futures
Under the Launch career development platform, all students graduate with at least two experiential learning opportunities on their transcripts. Guaranteed.
This nycTREC program will count towards this out-of-the-classroom requirement in Drew’s rigorous curriculum.
Travel
Travel outside the art classroom and into the art world to discuss works of art with the artists themselves. Escape to New York City and meet painters, sculptors, printmakers, and photographers in their studios, and discuss with critics and dealers in Chelsea galleries. Analyze the greatest works in the Museum of Modern Art, and visit public art projects around the city. Discover contemporary art in expected and unexpected places.
Rethink
Spend the semester examining all the important issues surrounding contemporary art, particularly critical theory and method, art historical background, and the broader issues of politics, nature, the self, feminism, and multiculturalism. Rethink how these different sectors interact to create contemporary art, and discover your own unique lens for analyzing the world.
Explore
Join your faculty leader for an exploration of the sprawling art scene in New York. View exhibits in Chelsea and the Lower East Side and visit museums like the New Museum, the Whitney, and the MoMA. Follow your advisoreverywhere contemporary art can be found while you decide for yourself what truly makes up contemporary art.
Connect
Connect with prominent artists through meetings in their studios. In these intimate interactions, students experience the center of the contemporary art world first hand through real human connection. Dialogue with leading figures in the field of contemporary art, and discover how they interact with and change the art scene. Connect your semester in NYC to your art degree at Drew, and prepare yourself for a future in contemporary art.
Costs and Financial Assistance
Each nycTREC has an associated program fee, which is posted each semester in the Course Catalog. Students receive a grant to cover round-trip transportation to New York City from Madison and program-related events and activities.
All of your Drew University financial assistance, whether merit or need-based, may be applied to all Drew-sponsored semester programs
Program Course

NEW YORK SEMESTER ON CONTEMPORARY ART
ART/ARTH 385 - New York Semester on Contemporary Art
ART/ARTH 385 – New York Semester on Contemporary Art
4 Credits
The New York Semester on Contemporary Art offers students the unique and exciting opportunity to learn about the ongoing history of art since 1945 through the combination of reading, class presentation and discussion, and visits to artists’ studios, museum and gallery exhibitions and public art projects. By pursuing each of these paths of discovery students learn about the major movements associated with the postwar period (Abstract Expressionism, Pop Art, Minimalism, Feminist Art, and others) as well as overarching themes of expression (identity, for example), changing processes and modes of making, interpretive methodologies, expanding definitions of art, relationships between art theory and practice, and the roles of art institutions and cultural workers (critics, curators, historians) in mediating the experience of contemporary art.
Permission of instructor required. Signature of instructor required for registration.
Prerequisite course: ARTH 306
Offered every Fall semester
CLA-Writing Intensive, CLA-Off Campus Experience