BHU's Faculty of Visual Arts mixes the traditional with modern education to students
The printing lab in the Department of Applied Arts has all equipments of the traditional letterpress printing, while the latest offset printing machine is installed just across the room.
Blending the traditional with the avant-garde, and uncovering a new dimension. It might sound pretentious but that's the forte of students of the Faculty of Visual Arts in Banaras Hindu University (BHU). As the Dean, Professor Hira Lal Prajapathi, puts it, "Our institute is the only one in India that holds the basic concept of arts. We provide the traditional along with modern education to enhance the overall capability of students."
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Over the decades, the excellence in art and design education in the faculty has resulted from a blending of Indian traditionalist and western academic, experimental and research-enriched approach. So the printing lab in the Department of Applied Arts has all equipments of the traditional letterpress printing, while the latest offset printing machine is installed just across the room. Explaining the diversity of tools and equipment, HoD, Plastic Arts, Vinod Kumar Singh, says, "We can clear the basic concept of students through use of the traditional method. In our lab, students use more than 30 quintal bronze metal during a year to cast sculptures. It is the highest amount of bronze metal used in any academic institute of fine arts in the country."
The department's 600-odd students are taught by 20 teachers-all distinguished artists practicing and engaged in research simultaneously. The faculty offers graduation (BFA), post -graduation (MFA) and doctoral research facilities in painting, textile design, applied arts, plastic arts (sculpture) and pottery-ceramic.
From Kala Sangeet Bharati, or the College of Music and Fine Arts, established in 1950 and offering junior and senior diplomas in painting, sculpture and music, to the advent of the graduate degree course in 1963, and attaining its present avatar in 1978, the Faculty of Visual Arts has come a long way. And it's fitting that it gets top honours in the India Today Group-Nielsen's Best Colleges Survey in a year the BHU is celebrating its centenary.
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