Changes in what employers expect of their future hires is opening up the job market for fine arts majors, and College of Fine Arts graduates are benefitting from the boon, students and administrators say.
Fine arts majors are no longer confined to being the ‘struggling artist,’ but open now to opportunities to become company presidents, columnists, technology specialists and high-end designers.
‘Just because you receive a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in painting doesn’t mean your office will be a studio full of canvases and paint cans,’ College of Fine Arts spokeswoman Jean Connaughton said in an email. ‘We have many notable alumni who graduated from CFA and did not follow ‘obvious’ career paths.’
Even now, CFA graduates have moved on to distinguish themselves.
Anthony Tommasini, a 1982 CFA graduate with a piano performance major, is now The New York Times’s chief classical critic. Former CFA acting major Nina Tassler, who graduated in 1979, rose to become president of CBS Entertainment.
‘People are realizing there are so many options in the arts area after graduation,’ CFA sophomore Elisa Sebra said. ‘There are so many job opportunities and so many specialized positions. You can start in the industry right away after graduation.’
Sebra, a costume design major, said though the degree confined to just theater costumes, her training enables her for all sorts of design.
‘If you think about it, I can design costumes for just about anything like TV or movies, maybe even become a makeup artist,’ she said.
CFA sophomore Colin Jones said his costume design major can apply to just about any kind of production. After graduation, he said he hopes to work for dance companies.
‘As an artist, you can sometimes work from home, and you are not confined to the traditional 9-to-5 jobs,’ he said. ‘Interest and willingness to go into fine arts are going up.’
CFA sophomore Taylor Adamik said she is one of the only two sophomore stage management majors, but has now actually seen an increase in student enrollment at CFA.
‘Combining the new technology with human artistic skills makes the best of our art because it adds emotional commitment to a certain production,’ she said. ‘[A] few decades ago, these opportunities were rare.’
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
