Being a student of fine arts means heightening your physical, intellectual, and cultural awareness. UNLV’s fine arts program prepares students for professional careers by helping them to apply their talents in innovative and creative contexts. Campus venues, including theatres, performance halls, studios and an architectural library, are available to students as they pursue their passions. Our artist-in-residence program brings preeminent thought leaders to UNLV. These artists work with students in class and often participate in experiential projects. The College of Fine Arts offers many public performances, exhibitions, and lectures per week during the academic year. These events vary from professional presentations from world-renowned artists to concerts presented by faculty and students, lectures offered by distinguished artists/writers/critics, exhibitions of student work in galleries, and the prestigious UNLV Film Series.
College Highlights
The College of Fine Arts offers an average of 4.4 public performances and exhibitions per week during the academic year. These events vary from professional presentations such as the New York Philharmonic and American Ballet Theatre to concerts presented by faculty and students, lectures offered by distinguished artists/writers/critics such as Seamus Heaney, exhibitions of student work in galleries and the UNLV Film Series.
Mission
The College of Fine Arts, a creative nexus anchored within the vibrant and diverse culture of Las Vegas, boldly launches visionaries who transform the global community through collaboration, scholarship, and innovation.
At UNLV we illuminate the power of the arts amidst breathtaking advancements in science and technology. In doing so, we are creating a global destination at the forefront of transforming arts and design. To accomplish this we encourage agency, inventiveness, problem-solving, and big-idea thinking in our students, faculty, and staff. We make education relevant through curriculum and effective learning outcomes. We are passionate and compassionate, principled and supportive, joyful and kind. We believe in inclusion, invention, transformation, engagement, and rigor. These vital principles underpin all our efforts and guide us in fulfilling our mission.
Success Metrics
We measure achievement of our mission through:
- Student success that outpaces our peer programs and institutions in recruitment, retention, graduation, and community impact;
- Creativity, scholarship and learning accomplished by our students, alumni and faculty whose impact is visionary and positive;
- Success in hiring and retaining nationally and internationally renowned faculty;
- Collaboration amongst our faculty, across our diverse programs, throughout UNLV and with the diverse communities we serve in Las Vegas and globally; and
- Recognition within the UNLV community and beyond for our efficacy, passion, principle, compassion, and joy.
CFA Around the world
The College of Fine Arts Around the World initiative is a powerful example of the way in which the CFA embeds and integrates global experiences into the education we offer to students. This is no ordinary travel abroad program, but rather it provides a robust opportunity for students to make original art and perform throughout the world to better understand it. Through this experiential learning, students develop agency and an inventive spirit. These characteristics are paramount to an artist's 21st century career success. After all, we are preparing students for careers for the years to come -- those that don't even exist yet! Emerging artists need to be ready to embrace whatever the future holds for them.
"The passion and inclusivity displayed by the professors and faculty of the film department have always made me feel very welcome. Every time I pass a familiar face in the halls or bump into someone on a set, there is always a warm smile and a kind, 'hello!'"
-Ian Watson, Film
We wish to acknowledge and honor the Indigenous communities of this region and recognize that the university is situated on the traditional homelands of the Nuwuvi, Southern Paiute People. We offer gratitude for the land itself, for those who have stewarded it for generations, and for the opportunity to study, learn, work, and be in community with this land.
Accreditation
Architecture
Undergraduate
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
Landscape Architecture Accrediting Board
Foundation for Interior Design Education Research
National Architectural Accrediting Board (M.Arch.)
Art
Undergraduate
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
National Association of Schools of Art and Design
Dance
Undergraduate
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
Film
Undergraduate
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
Music
Undergraduate
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
National Association of Schools of Music
Theatre
Undergraduate
Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities