Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts

Dean: Prof. Alexander P. Lobodanov

The Faculty was founded in accordance with the decision of the MSU Academic Board in February 2001 and enrolled its first students in July in the same year.

The establishment of our faculty revived the old tradition of art education in Moscow University, dating back to 1757 when the Academy of Three Fine Arts was founded on the basis of the University art classes. The Moscow University Public Theatre, headed by M.M. Heraskov, was founded in 1756; in 1757 the Theatre School was opened where University students performed together with D.B. Locatelli?s Italian opera actors. Later 18 University alumni formed the troupe of the Moscow Theatre.

The idea to revive the old University traditions of art education emerged from the demands of modern life and art, from the interaction and interdependence of modern art forms and genres. Nowadays art studies and global art practice require new methods to educate art students, in addition to traditional methods of educating specialists in art studies.

On the basis of classical university education, the Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts offers an advanced system to train art professionals: arts researchers and art creators, art experts and analysts, archivists and publishing workers, managers.

The Faculty offers full-time 4-year Bachelor?s Degree and 2-year Master?s Degree programs in Fine Arts. We train experts whose encyclopaedic knowledge allows them to perform comprehensive analysis of a work of art and to apply their knowledge both in the sphere of research and in practical work creating their own pieces of art, using a wide range of means of expression and mixing the means belonging to various allied art forms.

As opposed to the traditional approach, our programs aim to equip students with profound knowledge in the field of a specific form of art as well as to include integrative studies of the arts, the semiotics of fine and applied arts, the history and theory of every form of art being viewed as an integral part of the whole. Foreign languages are essential for our graduates to be able to communicate internationally and to study their colleagues? work, sharing experience for their professional enrichment; thus a special stress is on the foreign language course.

A variety of courses we offer allow students to choose from a vast number of major areas for their creative activities: fine arts, music, theatre, stage genres (opera, ballet, popular singing and stage performance, etc). Our curricula include externships and internships for all our students.

Master?s students are to present their MA thesis at the end of their course of study.

Our graduates are to be able to analyze and to study, to promote and to give reviews, to create works of art and to perform pieces, to work in arts management. They are in high demand in research centers, educational institutions, art and show business, etc.

Our graduates are artists and performers, researchers in museums, libraries, archives, and other institutions, educators at institutions of higher and secondary professional art education, they do analytical work at theatres, art galleries, various foundations, information centers, governmental agencies etc.

At the moment we are teaching 200 undergraduate and postgraduate students. Our 75 members of the academic staff are top experts in various spheres of art: artists and performers, fine art experts, singers and dancers from the Bolshoy and actors from the Maly Theatre, lead singers from the Moscow State Philharmonic, members of the unions of artists and musicians.

The Faculty has four Departments: the Department of General Theory and Semiotics of Art, the Department of Music, the Department of Verbal Arts, the Department of Theatre. We have two laboratories: the Theatre lab (Students? Theatre) and the Laboratory of Fine Arts (Students? Gallery) where students acquire professional expertise in staging plays, performing in concerts, organizing exhibitions.

The Faculty of Fine and Performing Arts has well-established links with a number of major universities abroad, our students taking part in exchange programs and having their internships there.