NCA is a premiere art college of this country. We are proud of our past as NCA is over 140 years old with a distinguished history, yet we have not rested on these laurels alone. We have forged ahead to embrace the future and impart a high standard of art education which is of international standard.
While the Lahore Campus is situated on the historic Mall Road, our Rawalpindi Campus was set up at the Liaquat Memorial Hall in January 2006. Both the campuses are a hub of academic and cultural activity. We select students from all across the country, therefore cultural diversity is a hallmark of NCA.
Our academic programs are structured and designed to produce professionals who are equipped to meet the requirements of a competitive work environment at national and international levels.
NCA offers both graduate and postgraduate degrees in various areas of specialization. While the Fine Arts Department of NCA has a long and illustrious legacy of excellence, our college also caters to a growing demand for professionals in other art-related fields, therefore the Department of Fine Arts, Design, Architecture, Musicology, Film and Television, Multimedia Arts, Visual Art, Interior Design and Cultural Studies offer students diverse options in various areas of study.
At the National College of Arts (NCA), we imagine a world. Not one world, but many. One for each of us, one from each of us, with these we write the autobiographies of our times, in objects, in lines, in a mortar, and perishable clay. In tracing ourselves, we leave traces. These are the traces that make our cities. Turn us inside out like pillowcases with that remembered smell, like shed skins. These are the traces that populate our nights, and from these traces, we dare to dream again…”.
The NCA offers several professional undergraduates and graduate degree courses. Conceived in a way in which the student’s unique creative and internal impetus is aligned with the requirements of the job market in an increasingly diverse world. Tradition and individual talent both form an integral part of history for more meaningful participation in the future. Freedom, plurality, and an interdisciplinary approach allow ideas, histories, theoretical positions, and technical procedures to be located within a critical space. The diversity of both the faculty and the student body ensures that no particular ideological or theoretical position is sacrosanct.
At the National College of Arts (NCA), we believe that education is a fluid process, where students are assisted in the exploration, investigation, and expression of their ideas. The visual is a language that must be learned. The knowledge of technique and medium forms the basis of personal expression, and that innovation comes through understanding and learning of visual language. We believe that creative expression has the power to change the world. An artist is a philosopher, linguist, idealist, writer, critic, theorist, and above all human at the same time.
Our library archives section houses original documents spanning over a hundred years as well as a continuously updated bank of contemporary publications this makes it one of the best visual art research libraries in South Asia. The environment in the NCA is professional, creative, and research-oriented, and has, over the years, attracted several professionals and educationists of repute from all over the world, who have come to this institution for teaching and learning. All of our faculty members are practitioners in their fields.
We believe that the cutting edge of creativity and expression is to be discovered within ourselves and for that, we individually nurture the potential in each student. We teach our students to reject nothing, to examine everything we teach them how to think but never what to think. In this lie freedom, ours and theirs.
