The Faculty of Art and Design at the Bauhaus-Universität Weimar is the Art Academy of Thuringia and, thereby, a full-fledged member of the Rectors‘ Conference of Art Colleges. Its responsibilities and tasks as an art college significantly influence the profile of the Faculty of Art and Design, which is firmly manifested in the structure of the Weimar Model. We have put the concept of the Weimar Model into practice by connecting project work, the principal form of instruction, with well-equipped workshops and interdisciplinary collaboration with other disciplines. This overlap of praxis and theory plays a particularly significant role in Weimar.
The undergraduate degree programmes offered by the Faculty of Art and Design provide first-level professional qualification in a wide range of artistic and design:
- Fine Art (Diplom)
- Media Art and Design (Bachelor of Fine Arts)
- Product Design (Bachelor of Arts)
- Visual Communication (Bachelor of Arts)
- Fine Art Education (Secondary School)– Double and Single Specialisation (First State Examination)
These are followed by master‘s degree programmes which culminate in secondlevel professional qualification in one of the following concentrations:
- Public Art and New Artistic Strategies (Master of Fine Arts)
- Media Art and Design (Master of Fine Arts)
- Product Design (Master of Arts)
- Visual Communication (Master of Arts)
The faculty‘s Ph.D. programme in Art and Design – the only one of its kind in Germany – represents the highest level of this three-tiered academic structure and culminates in the conferral of a Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree. The three-year doctoral programme is tailored to candidates with a master‘s degree or Diplom from an art or design college and concludes with a doctoral thesis comprised in equal parts of a scientific treatment and an artistic or design work.
With around 1,000 students the Faculty of Art and Design is large enough to offer the demanding programme put forth by the Weimar Model, both in terms of academic support and well-equipped facilities. Yet the Faculty is still small enough to thematically integrate the undergraduate and graduate degree programmes into a complementary whole. The Weimar Model ensures that instruction at the Faculty of Art and Design spans all three professional levels of qualification, while in the area of research, the primary focus lies on the paradigm of artistic research. The chairs in the artistic and design departments work closely with their counterparts in the scientific disciplines to ensure a mutually stimulating reflection of praxis and science.
The many applications for admission to the Faculty and the extremely high number of conferred degrees and resulting professional careers attest to the success of the Faculty‘s academic programme. Exhibitions, awards and cooperative endeavours in state and federally-funded projects demonstrate the growing reputation of the Faculty of Art and Design in Weimar.
