In recognizing a need for a “school of vision” Léo Marchutz had in mind an affirmative eye-opening educational experience for students. Encouraging them to open their eyes to what Oskar Kokoschka called “the miracle of the visible world”. The open eye is the foundation; it is a principle, or better still, a habit, related to the belief that the artist’s task is to make us feel, to make us see. Especially for the painter, art begins with the open eye.

The mission of the Marchutz Core Art Program is, above all, to develop the student's capacity to see. The program helps students sharpen their visual perceptions of the world around them, decipher their emotional responses to these perceptions, and through a holistic (studio, historical, and critical) discipline, relate their discoveries to an intensive investigation of the nature and aim of art.

Students will learn from a myriad of available resources including masterworks, architecture, figure and portrait work, and landscape. The human imagination, memory, perception, and craft are interwoven throughout the curriculum. These resources and programmatic themes help students look around their environment as well as within themselves until their artistic expression springs from a union of sight and insight – one of the major learning outcomes for all students.

Featured