SVA Destinations are short-term travel-based programs designed to recharge participants’ creative passions. We recapped five recent trips to spots around the globe.
Student work created on an SVA Destinations trip to Oaxaca, Mexico.
Created to reinvigorate one’s passion for art and design through short-term, destination-based study, SVA Destinations programs have for years merged restorative travel experiences with dedicated, inspiring artistic studies. This year, the School of Visual Arts offered several domestic and international voyages.
Two have been covered already—a Cannes Film Festival tour in the South of France and the Design West excursion, which took place on Ireland’s rugged west coast region of Connemara. But there were more: art-history-based trips to Paris and southern France; a road trip through Arizona exploring the state’s rich geologic and cultural history; a studio intensive in Oaxaca, Mexico; and a tour of the artistic and architectural masterpieces of ancient Egypt.
Scroll on to read and see more from faculty and students who participated.
Drawing Art History in Southern France
Led by SVA faculty Peter Hrisftoff (BFA 1981 Fine Arts) and Laurence Minard-Amalou, this Destinations program combines on-site drawing sessions with the study of art history. The areas of focus—Provence, the Ardeche and the Southern Rhone Valley—offered everything from the prehistoric caves of Chauvet to ancient Roman towns, monuments of the Middle Ages to Cézanne’s studio. Students investigated Romanesque and Gothic history, the work of Vincent van Gogh and visited contemporary art museums of the region.
“With such a slow-paced life, the South of France was really the break I needed,” BFA Illustration student Angel Ye says. “I found myself authentically drawing out of habit, not [just for] homework. By staying in the present, I was able to move out of the mentality of stress. . . . I hope to be able to create even more of a community at SVA, especially after this program.”
“I really didn’t anticipate this trip to be this incredible,” BFA Fine Arts student Jessie Soos says. “We were leisurely strolling down the street, taking it all in, and I simply felt like the luckiest person alive. . . . I learned so much and had such an incredible experience being able to draw in these historic places.”
Picturing Arizona
Led by SVA faculty member Kayla Gibbons (BFA 2011 Fine Arts), this course centered on both the history of wet-plate photography and the scenic grandeur and human history of Arizona. From visits to a 150-room ancestral pueblo to the experimental arcology (architecture/ecology) of Arcosanti to Frank Lloyd Wright’s desert utopia Taliesin West, this 12-day road trip spanned a vast geologic time scale, examining the persistence of human invention against an unforgiving landscape and centuries of displacement.
For Gibbons, the program’s highlights included a visit to the Grand Canyon and seeing 216-million-year-old petrified wood at Petrified Forest National Park.
“We visited museums, national parks and monuments, and significant architectural sites ranging from 1100 CE to 1989,” she says. “None of the seven students on the trip had ever experienced the Southwest, so the landscape itself shocked and awed.”
The Art of Ancient Egypt
Led by SVA faculty member Farrin Chwalkowski and BFA Comics academic advisor Nada Mohammed (MFA 2020 Visual Narrative; BFA 2014 Animation), this program provided foundational knowledge of the art and architecture of one of humanity’s greatest civilizations. Participants learned how Coptic and Islamic cultures mingled with the native ancient art of Egypt. Visiting the Pyramids of Giza, the Egyptian Museum and several other sites in Cairo, students also traveled to Aswan to explore the Nubian culture and the great temple of King Ramses II (Abu Simbel). A four-day cruise on the Nile River journeyed to such sites as the Karnak Temple, Valley of the Kings, Valley of the Queens and Temple of Hatshepsut.
“Everywhere we went, I had the humbling sense of standing in a place where people lived and made beautiful things 5,000 years ago,” Mohammed says. “Only in Egypt can you step inside one of the Great Pyramids of Giza or walk into a Pharaoh’s tomb. I was thrilled to see how open-minded our SVA students were about experiencing Egyptian culture. They rode camels, haggled in marketplaces, practiced Arabic phrases and tasted national dishes. Their willingness to not only accept but also participate in a different culture really got at the spirit of traveling and has me excited for my next SVA Destinations trip.”
Paris Impressionists—A Walking Tour
During this 11-day program, guided by Laurence Minard-Amalou and program coordinator Aziza Gaines, participants studied the main characteristics of Impressionist painting at its zenith, from the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century. Painters like Renoir, Monet, Manet, Van Gogh, Sisley, Degas and Caillebotte all lived in Paris during that period and changed the course of art history. While the main focus in Paris was the Gare Saint Lazare area and the Montmartre neighborhood, the exploration of the Parisian suburbs was rounded out by trips to Auvers-sur-Oise, where Cézanne and Pissaro preceded Van Gogh; Yerres, where Gustave Caillebotte grew up; and Giverny, to visit Monet’s home and gardens. Museum visits included Musée d’Orsay (the “temple” of Impressionist art), the Musée de l’Orangerie, the Musée Marmottan, Petit Palais Musée des Beaux Art and the Musée de Montmartre, where many these famous artists are exhibited today.
For BFA Fine Arts design student Yuhan Zeng the magic of Paris was as romantic and majestic as its reputation suggests.
“I loved getting lost in the streets,” she says. “The richness and diversity of bookstores, coffee shops and window displays make visitors unable to resist the temptation to stop and watch and explore carefully. But at the same time, Paris is also a city that provokes your desire to walk. It seduces you to explore and, simultaneously, make you stay in each place for a long time, which is its ineffable charm.”
Having visited Paris and the surrounding destinations, BFA Illustration student Chloe Benton said she understood why these regions produced so many legendary artists.
“It made sense to me that so many artists came from a place where everywhere you look is begging to be painted,” she says. “It makes sense that Impressionism was born here—the desire to capture a fleeting moment, because everything is constantly changing and moving. The nature, the sunsets and even the Haussmann architecture captured by these painters were uncanny to the scenes I saw unfolding before me. I felt reverent in times like these and the bustling city streets became sacred.”
During this 11-day program, we will study the main characteristics of Impressionist painting at its zenith, during the second half of the 19th century to the beginning of the 20th century.
Independent Projects: Studio Intensive in Oaxaca, Mexico
Administrated by SVA faculty Steve DeFrank (MFA 1990 Fine Arts) and Mary Jo Vath, the Oaxaca Destinations journey combined excursions through the storied city with concentrated independent studio time. Inhabited since prehistoric times, Oaxaca is home to relics from ancient civilizations, Spanish colonial art and architecture, world-renowned cultural and culinary traditions and a lively contemporary arts scene.
"Oaxaca has often been called magical, but I prefer to describe it as surprising,” Jo Vath says. “I feel this is why our students very often surprise themselves with what they make during the program.”
The 2023 SVA Destinations programs have concluded, but 2024 trips will be announced in the coming months. For updates and more information, keep an eye on sva.edu/destinations.