Viva Venezia
Art, altarpieces, and too many stairs make Venice an inspiration for CFA students
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Click on the video above to see CFA students talk about their experiences in Venice.
With 75 study abroad programs — in language, liberal arts, fine arts, engineering, and science — in more than 20 countries, Boston University can justifiably claim a global campus. But what does that mean beyond an impressive list of place names? Last fall, we checked in on six of these programs in Europe to capture a day, or two, in the life of BU abroad. We found that studying in a global campus can range from attending raucous sessions of the British Parliament to learning to love siestas and Madrid’s late-night dinners to getting splashed by the waters of Venice’s Grand Canal on the way to your painting studio. In the coming weeks, BU Today will be showcasing videos of students’ international experiences.
First stop: Venice! The canal city has been a destination for artists around the world since the city was cobbled together on a bunch of mud flats in the Middle Ages. Students at the College of Fine Arts school of visual arts are no exception — each year, art majors make their own pilgrimages to this hotbed of Renaissance art and architecture through BU’s Venice Studio Arts Program. The program offers a fully Venetian experience, from working alongside Italian artists in the print workshop of the Scuola Internazionale di Grafica to taking the vaparetto — that’s a water bus to you — to the painting studios on the nearby island of Giudecca. At the Scuola, students take classes ranging from woodcut to glassblowing, and class trips to Rome, Florence, and Milan help round out their cultural immersion.
If you want to study in Italy but can’t work wonders with a paintbrush, not to worry. BU’s Padua Language and Liberal Arts Program, located 20 miles west of Venice, offers a single semester or an entire academic year of intensive language study and course work — no painting chops required.
The deadline to apply for the Venice Studio Arts Program or the Padua Language and Liberal Arts Program for fall semester (or the yearlong program for Padua) is March 15. For the spring semester of either program, the deadline is October 15.
For more information on BU’s international programs, click here.
Devin Hahn can be reached at dhahn@bu.edu.
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