Rich history. Brilliant future.

The University of Iowa School of Art and Art History shaped the ways the arts are taught in higher education. In the 1920s, forward-thinking university leaders—President Walter Jessup and Graduate Dean Carl Seashore—implemented two radical and novel innovations: bringing prominent working artists onto the faculty, and allowing graduate students to submit creative work as final theses instead of scholarly dissertations. This approach, nicknamed the "Iowa Idea," gave rise to the MFA, the standard advanced arts degree worldwide.

The arts at Iowa flourished under this new philosophy, and in 1938 art department chair Lester Longman took the Iowa Idea and ran with it. In what today is the primary model for college-level art programs—but at the time was unheard of—he combined studio courses in the practice of art with scholarly courses in the history and theory of art, all as part of a liberal arts education. The School of Art and Art History was born, going on to hire groundbreaking faculty artists such as Grant Wood, Philip Guston, and Byron Burford, and to graduate celebrated artists such as Charles Ray, Elizabeth Catlett, and Ana Mendieta.

Because of the university's and State of Iowa's longstanding and ongoing commitment to the arts, today the School of Art and Art History—a unit of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences—occupies two architectural masterpieces designed by Steven Holl. The school offers the BA, BFA, and MFA degrees in studio art and the BA, MA, and PhD in art history. It still hires practicing artists and art history scholars with national and international reputations as leaders of their disciplines. And it continues to produce alumni who are shaping the future of art and art education.