The Foundations Program brings together all students wanting to major or minor in art or art history to form a vital community that we call Studio Angelico. It provides aspiring artists and art historians with the fundamental language of design as well as an introduction to both traditional and contemporary materials, media and practices. The program includes five courses that cover the essentials: drawing, three-dimensional design, two-dimensional design, digital concepts and basic vocabulary used by artists and art historians.

One of the distinctive features of Siena’s Foundations Program is the rigorous year-long Core Concepts course that is team-taught by a studio professor and an art history professor. Together they help students make connections between the material practices of studio artists and the academic skills of art historians. In the first semester of this course, students become fluent in the elements and principles of design as they relate to two-dimensional media, including photography, painting, drawing and printmaking. In the second semester, students are introduced to the history of architecture. Architectural images and ideas are then incorporated into two-dimensional designs assignments.

The other three Foundations courses allow students of all levels to explore the fundamentals of drawing, computer-based art, and three-dimensional media.

In this way, we make sure that all of our incoming art and art history students are welcomed into our community and are provided with a bedrock of ideas, media and practices upon which they can build as they move into their more specialized, upper-level courses.