LITUANIA
Vilnius Academy of Arts (henceforth – VAA), founded in 1793 as the Department of Architecture at the Vilnius University, is an autonomous university level state institution bearing the monopoly of higher art and design education in Lithuania. There are more then two thousands students at VAA seeking traditional undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in fine and applied arts, architecture, interior, fashion, graphic and industrial design as well as art history and cultural management. The school is split over four cities: Vilnius, Kaunas, Telsiai and Klaipeda.
Art studies at VAA do not end up in a narrow concentration on specific art issues. Undergraduate study programmes are split into three blocks: speciality studies, general art studies, humanities and social sciences. The combination of the three blocks enables the Academy to provide diverse, interdisciplinary and liberal education. More so, the main studies at VAA are combined with summer internships and workshops that add to the practical skills of the VAA students.
Since VAA is the only higher art education institution in Lithuania we can proudly claim that the most prominent Lithuanian artists, designers, and art historians graduated from this school. A large part of them came back to the Academy to become its faculty members.
