The Royal Institute of Art (RIA) in Stockholm is a leading art institution of higher education located in Stockholm with a long artistic tradition dating back to the 18th century. The education offers both undergraduate and postgraduate studies in Fine Arts and postgraduate studies in Architecture. RIA also runs an active international program with lectures, exhibitions, and publications. The Vice-Chancellor of the Royal Institute of Art is Sara Arrhenius.
The Royal Institute of Art fosters an emerging research environment focusing on art, the conditions for art production, and the contemporary challenges for such a practice within and beyond the art world. The Royal Institute of Art hosts artistic research and development projects. They include artistic development projects, Ph.D. studies, Mejan Residents, and externally funded research projects. Ongoing research activities include a very diverse range of topics, approaches, and methodologies. Research processes are made public through various formats, including exhibitions, film screenings, performances, conferences, and publications. The RIA endorses reflexive practice-based artistic research – where knowledge is forged through dialogues between ideas and matter, site, and audience – capable of illuminating diverse aspects of human experience in multiple and unexpected ways. The RIA intensifies its activities connected with artistic research and artistic development projects and their relevance within the bachelor and master level programs.
The workshops of the Royal Institute of Art provide students with the opportunity to expand their artistic practice by experimenting with different techniques in painting, sculpture, printmaking, wood, glass, metalwork, photography, digital media, and video, as well as interactive media and 3D. Students are free to choose which technique or combination of techniques they would like to work with and explore. Workshops offer professional, individualized guidance by lecturers and teachers and introductory courses on techniques and materials. With the students' artistic practice as a point of departure, students and teachers work together to realize experiments, sketches, models, projects, and produce art objects. Visiting artists are also invited to take advantage of the excellent facilities and technical knowledge to develop collaborative projects involving the students.
The Royal Institute of Art offers undergraduate and postgraduate programs and courses in Fine Arts and postgraduate courses in Architecture and Urban Studies. Fine Arts studies at the Royal Institute of Art encourage critical thinking and practical experimentation with different artistic media and techniques. Students become familiarized and confident in reflexively working between and outside conventional frameworks of contemporary art production. The RIA's dynamic learning environment involves a combination of mixed-year collective discussion and group critiques, individualized work in the studios and workshops, and practical and theoretical workshops, courses, seminars, public lectures, and study trips. Exhibition making is an integral part of education students can exhibit their work in the RIA gallery throughout different stages of their studies. Students have access to excellent workshops led by highly skilled faculty in various fields, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, interactive systems, photography, digital media, and video. All students are provided with studio space for the full duration of their respective programs.
