Established in August 2008, the TPK Student Art Gallery is a place for students to exhibit their work while learning to operate their own gallery and curate their own exhibitions. By providing these types of courses and opportunities, our students are encouraged to be discerning visual thinkers and ethical practitioners in their chosen area of art, art history or design. Students in the visual arts must understand diverse aspects of past and present cultures, and develop their capacity for creative expression and effective communication. Through its policies and practices, the TPK Student Art Gallery fosters the aesthetic, intellectual, professional, personal, and social development of its students.
The gallery is operated by student gallery attendants and maintained by the student gallery director, and a gallery technician. Each semester, an invitation for gallery exhibition proposals is sent out to all students and faculty mentors. A panel of students then review these submissions and choose the proposals that are well-crafted and best fit the gallery space. These submissions are an important aspect of the professionalizing aspects of gallery exhibitions and invites a range of submissions for the gallery space.
Objectives & Mission
The gallery prepares students as future art historians, artists and designers by providing a curriculum that explores ideas, technical and conceptual skills, and aesthetic choices.
The gallery upholds academic freedom and is a safe environment for members of the campus community to responsibly question, examine and explore all intellectual ground. This creates an environment of intellectual enrichment open to all, as well as one that supports creative risk-taking, experimentation, and the ongoing exploration of the history and traditions of the visual arts.
The gallery explores ways to play a greater leadership role in the advocacy, understanding and protection of the visual arts at the community, state, national and international level. This includes recognizing and providing opportunities that assist the entire campus in the understanding of the social role, value and ethical implications of the artist/designer in society.
The gallery engages actively in the exploration of historical, multicultural, global and future oriented perspectives, and strives for a diverse educational environment of inclusiveness, acceptance and equal opportunity.
The gallery promotes greater awareness and a more active commitment to environmental issues in a future-oriented perspective that acknowledges our individual and institutional relationship with the earth and our obligations to conserve natural resources.
The gallery tries to build a community of mutual respect for differences, that values relationship and works to break down barriers that divide. On campus, this means continuing to provide opportunities for personal connection and building bridges across departments and disciplines.
Our Core Beliefs
- The arts are essential in the cultural and intellectual life of a society
- A rich and varied arts education engages innovation and traditions
- All educational experiences should nurture lives of learning and creativity
- Developing and supporting the whole student
- Academic freedom, inquiry and freedom of expression are critical to the arts
- Integrity and social responsibility are crucial within our interdependent world
- A diverse community will serve as a source of empowerment