Drawing, Painting, and Project Program
The Student Art Association Drawing, Painting, and Project Program is a 1060 sq. ft., 24 hour space dedicated to studio art making. It has tall ceilings, large storage cabinets for equipment and materials, and individual lockers for students and teachers. Thanks to generous grants from the Council for the Arts at MIT, the studio is equipped with two printing presses and a drying rack for making Woodblock, Linoleum, and Litho-Etching prints. Other assets include 20 easels, a drying rack for painting, a model stand, light stands, folding worktables, and plenty of workspace.
The SAA Drawing, Painting, and Project Program offers beginning through intermediate studio art classes each fall, winter, spring, and summer semester. Our current curriculum includes Chinese Brush Painting, Beginning Life Drawing, Watercolor, Collage, Oil Painting, Abstract Painting, and Collagraph. 159 graduate students, undergraduates, staff, alumni, and other MIT affiliates, in that order, were enrolled in these classes in 2006.
MIT provides us with a space to work. A grant from the Council for the Arts currently pays the salary for a 10%, four hours per week, Technical Instructor staff position who helps run the studio. Student fees currently pay for all class expenses. To keep fees low, our teacher pay level is below market level, and we provide almost no materials to our students.
The most common questions that incoming freshmen ask art groups at information fairs is “Do you offer oil painting?” and “Do I have to pay for the class?” Our student fee is about $85 per semester plus materials. Students who want to paint often do so by themselves in their dorm rooms. Using solvents and other toxic painting materials within enclosed living spaces creates a serious health risk for students.
Visiting Artist Program
Many visiting artists come to MIT every year to work with different programs in many different arts media. These artists are typically brought to MIT to talk to students, not to teach them. The SAA Drawing, Painting, and Project Program should offer studio classes in whatever media visiting artists work in. This would allow students to interact with artists through their own creativity. A small fund for such a program and a few more hours of Technical Instructor staffing per week would allow this studio to adapt to almost any medium of studio arts instruction.
There is a great, unmet need for traditional studio arts on MIT’s campus. A modest endowment will help us meet this need more adequately by allowing us to practically eliminate class fees for students, provide free class materials, offer classes in conjunction with visiting artists, update and maintain our equipment, increase the Studio Manager’s employment level to twelve hours per week position, and provide market level pay rates to our teachers.
Endowing and naming the SAA Drawing, Painting, and Project Program is a unique opportunity to benefit a wide swath of student life on campus.
Annual Drawing, Painting, and Project Studio Budget Needs
Student Fee Subsidy 7,000
50% Studio manager salaries (w/ EBs) 17,200
Teaching payroll to $40/hr. 10,700
Class materials 10,000
Equipment Depreciation 1,800
Visiting Artist Program 6,000
Total annual expenditure 52,700
Endowing the SAA Office
Please Visit the MIT Giving Page to support the Drawing, Painting, and Project Studio.
