The Honors Program at School of Visual Arts is a challenging program for artists who seek academic enrichment along with their studio practice.

Designed to bring talented, intellectually ambitious students together to work closely with one another and with specially selected studio and liberal arts professors, this small, interdisciplinary program unites the liberal arts (literature, history, philosophy and art history) in order to focus on the historical and thematic connections among them.

The Honors curriculum is a challenging, enriching, and coherent path through an SVA student's humanities, science, and art history courses. Honors undergirds a rich creative practice by developing students' historical, theoretical and critical perspectives; by asking core questions about the meaning of art in the modern world; and by providing a top notch education in the liberal arts.

First-year Honors students take an interlocking set of seminars on philosophy, literature, art history, and political and social history, focused on modernity and modernism. The second and third years in the Honors Program offer an array of seminars—such as “One Book at a Time,” "Human and Divine," "Art Writing," "The Origins of Art," "Self, Culture, and Society," and “Environmental Economics”—that build on these foundations. Completion of the first two years of the program fulfills the majority of humanities and sciences and art history requirements, giving Honors students additional elective choices in their junior and senior years.

All Honors courses are taught by highly qualified academics in a seminar-style: engage in the close reading of primary texts, rather than textbooks; offer small class sizes to provide an intimate and powerful learning environment; emphasize discussion, writing, and critical thinking. Honors students emerge from their courses with self-understanding and with skills that come to their aid in the midst of rapidly changing aesthetic, employment, technological, and political landscapes.

The Honors Program boasts a research library that includes books and periodicals on art history, philosophy, political history, literature and literary criticism. Shared with the Visual & Critical Studies Department, the library includes a private kitchen, computers and printers, and an inviting atmosphere for students to read, write, and study.

First-time freshmen in Advertising, Animation, Comics, 3D Animation and Visual Effects, Design, Film, Fine Arts, Illustration and Photography and Video who seek academic enrichment and challenge as an adjunct to their study are invited to apply to the SVA Honors Program.

Applicants interested in the Honors Program should submit the Honors Program “Why Art?” essay along with the rest of their BFA application materials by February 15, 2026.

Students may also submit their Honors Program materials electronically to honors@sva.edu in PDF format.

Please Note: Only students invited to participate in the Honors Program will receive an invitation letter in March.