Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts

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Lyme Academy College Academic Center.

Founded in 1976 by Elisabeth Gordon Chandler as a figurative academy for the teaching of sculpture, figure drawing, and painting, the Lyme Academy College of Fine Arts is a unique art college in Old Lyme, Connecticut, dedicated to the fine arts. The school offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in the disciplines of painting and sculpture, and will add Illustration in the fall of 2008. The college also offers Post-Baccalaureate and a 3-year Certificate program. Over the years the College has earned a reputation as a forerunner in contemporary Fine Arts higher education, “…many in the art world believe the (Lyme) Academy has contributed to the renaissance of representational art." New York Times.

As one of the distinguished art colleges in New England, the Lyme Academy College is the sole fine-arts-only art college accredited by the New England Association of Schools and Colleges and is one of the independent Art Colleges belonging to the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. The College is also accredited by the State of Connecticut, and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design and the Connecticut Conference of Independent Colleges.

Amongst private art colleges, the Lyme Academy is known for its contemporary focus on the history and tradition of representational art, centered on the study of nature and the figure. Its small student body offers a uniquely personal education. With an enrollment of around 200 students, the Lyme Academy College is an intimate artistic community, noted as one of the safest Art Colleges in the United States. Ninety-five percent of classes have fewer than twenty students. The student-to-faculty ratio is fourteen to one, which facilitates an academy based teaching philosophy not often made available at other art colleges.

The College's location in Old Lyme, Connecticut, is one of the most beautiful, and unspoiled areas in America. Old Lyme became a center for the American Impressionists at the turn of the century, as they became attracted to the luminosity of the landscape with its resemblance to the light and landscape painted by the Impressionists in France. It is in close proximity to both New York and Boston (two hours away) as well as convenient access to major visual arts collections held in Connecticut by the Yale University Art Gallery, the Yale Center for British Art, the Wadsworth Athenaeum, and The New Britain Museum of American Art, not to mention The Florence Griswold Museum just down the street. The college facilitates a focus on the fine arts that is distinctive from many art colleges and schools in the country.

BFA Degrees have been awarded since 1996. Many alumni of this new college have gone on to earn their MFA degrees, one has won a Fulbright Fellowship.