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nycTREC

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)
  • Prerequisites: ARTH 306: Early 20th Century Art
  • Good academic and disciplinary standing

Program Directors

Rory Mulligan (Fall 2026)
Associate Teaching Professor, Art

Kimberly Rhodes
Professor, Art History | NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor, Humanities

Semester on Contemporary Art

Apply Now - Applications are due March 10

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

At Drew, all students graduate with at least two experiential learning opportunities on their transcripts. Guaranteed.

This nycTREC program fulfills the Gen Ed-Immersive Experience requirement.

Travel

Travel outside the art and art history classrooms 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 advisor everywhere 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 firsthand 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 gives students the chance to study the history of art since 1945 through readings, presentations, discussions, and visits to artists’ studios, museums, galleries, and public art installations. The course explores major movements and themes from the postwar era and examines how art theory, institutions, and cultural workers shape 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