Fine Arts

a view of a student sitting at a piano through the light

We aim to provide our students with an intellectual and creative foundation for a life-long involvement with the Arts.

We believe the arts are not merely an entertaining distraction from an over-compartmentalized modern life, but an integral, unifying, and fundamentally humanizing part of life itself. Theatre, music, and visual arts deserve study as distinct entities, much as chemistry, biology, and physics do in the natural sciences, but just as there is biochemistry, there is musical theatre, and the arts, while distinct, work together, complementing one another and occasionally overlapping, in serving the common goal of human expression.

College may teach us to measure and calculate, to explain and justify, to organize and prioritize, but to be fully human, we must also know how to feel and express. Jean-Bernard Bucky, the William Dwight Whitney Professor of Theatre at Williams College, contends "the arts provide direct and forceful means for expressing fantasy and irony, extravagance and eccentricity, irrationality and hope, frustration and anguish, and, indeed, failure - qualities not often embraced by other academic disciplines." 

In this way, all the areas of the liberal arts work together to form a complete person.

Degree Offerings

Fine Arts Department

Dr. Helena K. W. von Rueden, Chair
Elliott Associate Professor of Fine Arts
Brinkley Hall, 015
Hampden-Sydney College | Hampden-Sydney, VA 23943
(434) 223-6367
hvonrueden@hsc.edu

Fine Arts Professors

Fine Arts Professors

Matthew Dubroff

Associate Professor of Theater

Johns Auditorium 203
(434) 223-6362
mdubroff@hsc.edu

View Matthew Dubroff

Brian Grogan

Lecturer of Fine Arts

Brinkley Hall, 200
(434) 223-6389
bgrogan@hsc.edu

View Brian Grogan

Shirley Kagan

Barger-Barclay Professor of Theater

Johns Auditorium, 201
(434) 223-6266
skagan@hsc.edu

View Shirley Kagan

Ray Kleinlein

Elliott Assistant Professor of Fine Arts

Brinkley Hall, 103
(434) 223-6295
rkleinlein@hsc.edu

View Ray Kleinlein

Mark Lerman

Lecturer of Fine Arts

Brinkley Hall
mlerman@hsc.edu

View Mark Lerman

Nicholas Morgan

Assistant Professor of Fine Arts

Brinkley Hall, 100
(434) 223-7264
nmorgan@hsc.edu

View Nicholas Morgan

Victor Szabo

Elliott Associate Professor of Fine Arts

Brinkley Hall, 014
(434) 223-6635
vszabo@hsc.edu

View Victor Szabo

Helena von Rueden

Elliott Associate Professor of Fine Arts

Brinkley Hall, 015
(434) 223-6367
hvonrueden@hsc.edu

View Helena von Rueden

Meaghan Walsh

Lecturer of Fine Arts

Brinkley Hall, 100
(434) 223-7264
mwalsh@hsc.edu

View Meaghan Walsh