The Oxbow School

The Oxbow School an innovative, interdisciplinary semester program combining visual arts with academics provides high school students with the skills necessary to negotiate and succeed in an increasingly complex and interdependent world. Through rigorous studio art practice grounded in creative and intellectual inquiry, the program is designed to extend each student’s critical thinking abilities. Oxbow students develop a new sense of identity, self-worth, and confidence that enables them to take more active responsibility for their own learning and lives. All Oxbow courses count toward your graduation requirements. The project-based, interdisciplinary Oxbow approach to both art classes and academic classes is designed to stimulate the imagination and fuel creativity. The first 12 weeks of the semester feature a series of short-term projects that give both a new approach to academic study and experience in all of the Oxbow art studios. As the culmination of the semester, each student chooses, researches and creates a Final Project a work or body of work that includes a research paper and a public exhibit. The Final Project requires in-depth and sustained intellectual and artistic inquiry and offers the chance to explore the artistic medium of the student’s choice. Curiosity, fed by research and reflection, and supported by the resources of well-equipped studios and experienced faculty, typically lead students into new areas of knowledge and new ways of learning. This approach to education enables students to become their own best teacher thinking critically, refining a distinctive artistic vision and voice, and growing into their own future.