Arts

across the divisions

The Creative Journey

Artistic exploration begins in our youngest classrooms and deepens with every grade. Across visual art, music, theater, and dance, students move from open-ended play to disciplined craft to independent, original work, learning to take creative risks, reflect on their choices, and present to a real audience. The progression is intentional, and it's the same at its core in every division: safety first, respect for materials and one another, and the belief that each student sees the world in a way worth expressing.

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grades small world–kindergarten

Early Learning Center

In the ELC, art, music, and movement are woven into daily learning—and taught in the immersion language. Our youngest artists explore as many materials as we can put in front of them, learn to talk about their own style, and share their work in classroom exhibitions and performances. Music, dance, and creative movement each have a dedicated place, and seasonal celebrations like the Snowflake Assembly, Lunar New Year, and Festival de Español bring the whole community together and their creative learning to life.

grades 1–5

Lower Division

Visual art deepens through the lens of the World Course and is taught in their immersion language—students create alebrijes, paint blue-and-white porcelain, and map their world in third grade. They learn to give and receive feedback, assess their own work, and present at student-led shares. Every grade takes part in a collaborative, class-wide project, and partnerships with institutions like the China Institute and the Whitney Museum bring the city's art world into the work. Dance becomes its own discipline here as students study movement as a form of expression.

grades 6–8

Middle Grades

Students begin to shape an artistic identity. In the studio, they move from the elements of art into ambitious projects — Mughal miniatures, Majolica ceramics, painting with a limited Zorn palette. In music, instrumental and vocal students rehearse, compose, and perform at winter and spring concerts and the school's Battle of the Bands. And the Avenues Drama Program begins, staging full productions and original student work.

Students work on complex interdisciplinary projects, exploring areas of interest in greater depth and showcasing their ability to research, experiment, and collaborate.

grades 9–12

Upper Grades

Every 9th grader begins with Introduction to the Creative Process—in visual art, music, or drama—a foundation in how original work actually gets made. From there, students choose their path: drawing and painting, photography, sculpture, film, ceramics, design and engineering, digital art, instrumental and vocal music, theater. Advanced studios, auditioned ensembles, and a culminating exhibition or performance let the most committed artists work like professionals. Arts and design are graduation requirements because, at Avenues, making is part of being educated.