A Global Destination for the Arts
Colby offers some of the best opportunities in the country for blossoming visual and performing artists. Brand-new art studios, dedicated world-class professors, the finest college art museum in the country (and the largest in the state), and a premier collection of American art all enhance the learning experience. Courses range from printmaking to interactive digital media to stagecraft and everything in between. Supported by events featuring internationally renowned filmmakers, artists, and activists, Colby’s art culture flourishes.
The Colby College Museum of Art
The Colby College Museum of Art is a magnet for artists and researchers from around the world. They bring their ideas to Colby and invite students to join them in cross-disciplinary research, art making, performance, and discovery.
The Colby College Museum of Art
sits at the crossroads of interdisciplinary thinking.
The Museum facilitates intellectual engagement between students, faculty, staff, artists, and community members.
The Lunder Institute for American Art
The Lunder Institute for American Art supports innovative research and creative production that expands the boundaries of American art. A collaborative initiative with the Colby College Museum of Art, the Lunder Institute invites visiting artists, scholars, and museum professionals to engage across disciplines with Colby faculty and students, institutional partners, and leading experts. Through fellowships, workshops, symposia, and incubator grants, the Lunder Institute amplifies marginalized voices, challenges convention, and provides a platform for generative dialogue through art and scholarship.
The Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts
The Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts, recently opened in fall 2023, is the largest academic building project in the College’s history. Its multipurpose spaces include a signature performance hall; flexible studios and makerspaces; classrooms and music practice rooms; recording and video editing suites; and an arts incubator.
Center for the Arts and Humanities
Colby’s Center for the Arts and Humanities celebrates the pivotal role of the arts and humanities in the intellectual life of the College and the community, and it promotes the long-term benefits of the skills developed through humanistic research. Through Colby’s annual humanities themes, innovative courses promote experiential learning by incorporating hands-on observation, experimentation, and skill-building perspectives more commonly associated with the natural sciences. Courses across the humanistic disciplines turn the Colby College Museum of Art, Special Collections and Archives in Miller Library, and locations across Maine into laboratories.
