Arts
Programs / Arts / Visual Arts
Visual arts at Grace develops students to be inventive, abstract thinkers who learn to see the world as something to be made and remade. From the earliest explorations in clay, paint, and collage in junior kindergarten through the development of an original body of work in the High School, the program builds technical skill, creative confidence, and a genuine artistic voice. New York City is a constant presence throughout: students make regular visits to the Whitney Museum, the Guggenheim, MoMA, students make regular visits to the Whitney, Guggenheim, MoMA, as well as contemporary galleries and studios across the city, situating their work within a living artistic tradition.
Visual arts in Early Childhood seeks to embrace the artist in every child and to offer each child new ways to explore, collaborate, problem solve, and develop their individual voices through creative expression. From their first days in the art studio, students are encouraged to approach creative problems with imagination and independence, learning to see the world as something to be made and remade. In junior kindergarten, students are introduced to the studio space and its materials—clay, paint, collage—and begin developing the habits of observation, experimentation, and care. Kindergarteners build on these foundations, working at a larger scale and making increasingly independent choices about materials and approach. Projects often relate to the community and larger world around them, with a continued focus on imagination and self-expression. First graders explore the artistic traditions from around the world, integrating their visual art work with their social studies and science studies of artistic histories, cultural traditions, and ecological diversity. Students practice the basic elements and principles of visual art through a dynamic range of 2D and 3D media, including painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and textile arts.
Visual arts in the Lower School deepens students’ engagement with materials, techniques, and ideas, asking them to look more carefully, think more critically, and create more intentionally. Cross-curricular connections are woven throughout the program: Second graders explore New York City through observational drawings of local birds, ceramic sculptures, and a printmaking project in which individual building drawings combine to form a shared skyline. Third graders work at large scale, constructing papier-mâché tools and sculpting honey bees and honeycombs in connection with their science curriculum. Fourth graders engage deeply with ancient Greek civilization through ceramic amphorae, terracotta plates decorated with scenes from Greek mythology, and papier-mâché masks inspired by Greek theater.
Middle school students are asked to look carefully, think critically, and create deliberately. Fifth graders develop foundational skills in drawing, painting, printmaking, collage, and ceramics, with an emphasis on experimentation and developing methods of their own. In sixth grade, students build on these skills through multi-step processes including printmaking, cardboard construction, and ceramic sculpture, culminating in a lamp unit in which each student designs and wires a working lamp with a sculpted ceramic base and hand-painted shade. In eighth grade, students use a broad range of media to interpret the world around them, developing a distinctive artistic voice through open-ended prompts that reward both technical skill and creative risk-taking. In seventh grade, students practice a range of techniques through an investigation of 2D and 3D mediums, with an emphasis on observational still life painting, figure sculpture and digital art & animation. Material exploration is encouraged as a way to hone skills and gain artistic and historical knowledge and understanding. In seventh and eighth grade, students with a serious interest in visual art are encouraged to elect Art Language, a hybrid studio and art history course that examines how artists across time have made work that speaks to their particular moment in history.
The visual arts program at Grace asks students to look carefully, think critically, and create deliberately.
The High School houses four dedicated visual arts studios with spaces for drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, digital photography, and film.
Visual arts at Grace develops students as inventive, abstract thinkers who learn to see the world as something to be made and remade. It is a discipline that demands the intellectual rigor, creative risk-taking, and sustained commitment that characterize all of Grace’s academic courses. The curriculum is designed to be accessible to students at all skill levels, with foundational semester-long courses in ninth and tenth grade covering drawing, design, photography, and sculpture, and upper-level courses in eleventh and twelfth grade organized around medium-specific concepts and increasingly independent projects.
In ninth and tenth grade, foundational courses in Drawing, Visual Thinking, Sculpture, and Photography introduce students to the core vocabulary and processes of artistic production: composition, color, scale, materiality, and the relationship between observation and imagination. In eleventh and twelfth grade, students build on these foundations in upper-level courses including Painting, Drawing and Printmaking II, Sculpture II, and Photography II, each of which pushes them toward greater independence, conceptual depth, and personal voice.
Students with a serious commitment to visual art may apply to the Visual Art Major or the Film and Media Major, yearlong courses taken as one of a student’s five academic majors, in which students develop an independent body of work informed by sustained research and studio practice. Film and media students study the history of cinema alongside industry-standard filmmaking techniques, submitting their work to regional and national film festivals. Visual art majors pursue conceptually driven studio projects informed by exposure to diverse historical lineages of artists and ideas, as well as site visits and readings. Each spring, Visual Art Majors present their independent bodies of work at the High School Art and Music Night, alongside work from students in arts electives, and celebrate the launch of ephemera, Grace’s student-run art and literary magazine.
The High School houses four dedicated visual arts studios with spaces for drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, digital photography, and film, including an etching press, a large-format Epson printer, a digital photography lab, and a ceramics kiln with pottery wheels. Regular visits to museums, galleries, and working artists’ studios across New York City—including the Whitney Museum, MoMA, the Guggenheim, and contemporary art galleries and studios—situate students’ work within a broader artistic conversation and allows them to reflect on their own artistic voices.
