Art courses at Emory & Henry relate the basic concepts involved in art-making and the visual historical record to your life and experiences. Understanding visual language is necessary to comprehend fully the development of our culture.

Visual artists typically examine personal and societal issues. The resulting works convey these concerns and offer you an opportunity to reflect on these issues and also examine your own positions and values.

The necessary foundation for this process begins with perception and awareness. You must then develop an understanding of visual form. Finally, you must be able to manipulate the elements of form through media processes. It is when you have reached these levels of awareness and technical achievement that you acquire the tools to articulate your own ideas in visual form.

The Student Art Association coordinates numerous arts activities, trips, and exhibits in the student galleries

An exchange program with educational institutions offers travel abroad, which includes the opportunity to travel to Italy, China, and England every other year.

The newly rennovated and modernized Byars Fine Art Center houses studios for design, painting, drawing, photography and printmaking. The center's graphic design studio features state of the art Macintosh computers. Byars Fine Art Center also includes an art history classroom, the George Chavatel Collection, departmental offices and two galleries that feature exhibits of current and past students.

The 1912 Gallery and the T.R. Phelps Collection of Photography are housed at the Emory Train Depot.

The three-dimensional studio located in Martin Brock Annex, serves courses in three-dimensional design, ceramics, crafts and sculpture.