Message from the Head of School
It’s almost Graduation Day – held on 9 December this year – and our party for graduating students directly after. At this time of the year, time flies with many last minute tasks before staff go on leave after Graduation. So, I am writing my last message for the year in time for
it to reach you all out there.
On behalf of the Dunedin School of Art at Otago Polytechnic I thank all students and staff for a wonderful year in 2011. Everybody worked exceptionally hard to achieve very high level outcomes in studio work, writing, seminars, interim exhibitions, reimaging South Dunedin projects, the custom printing project, SITE (our end-of-year final undergraduate student exhibition) and many postgraduate exhibitions over the year.
Other highlights were the Tautai Contemporary Arts Trust New Horizons Workshop Week hosted by us for Pasifika secondary school leavers in April, the Art & Medicine Symposium coordinated with the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Otago in August, and the launch of the Dunedin School of Art Foundation in November. Each time, students and staff rallied to work together to make these community events most successful.
I am looking forward to catching up with all returning students and to meeting all new students during Orientation Week and the commencement of classes from 13 February 2012. Exciting events and introductions to plans for the new year will be part of that week. New students will start becoming acquainted with our School, so that they can choose where they would like to focus in due course.
Each of our studio areas contribute to our exciting mix and students choose where they feel most interested and challenged, while receiving the grounding necessary for 21st-century artists in the supportive disciplines of Art History & Theory, Drawing and Digital Literacy – subjects which prepare students for the challenging creative work to be done in the other studio areas.
Please remember that family and friends are welcome to come and see what we do here at the School and they are also most welcome to attend the many public events which will take place at the Dunedin School of Art in 2012.
In the meantime, I wish you and yours a happy end-of-year and a wonderful start to 2012 before we commence the academic year on 13 February.
1 December 2011
Professor Leoni Schmidt
Head: Dunedin School of Art
Professor Leoni Schmidt, Head of the Dunedin School of Art at Otago Polytechnic, visited art museums and galleries in Italy during October. Here she is at the Palazzo Pitti in Florence. Highlights of her visit were the Textiles Museum in Prato, the Museo del Specolo in Florence and the new Museum of Art and Architecture for the Twenty First Century (MAXXI) in Rome.
26 October 2010