VCUarts Qatar Hosts Gulf’s First National Portfolio Day

Event gives prospective students an opportunity to interact with some of the top art and design universities from the US, the UK and France

Young creatives from high schools and universities across Qatar, and abroad, turned up at the National Portfolio Day event held at Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts in Qatar (VCUarts Qatar) recently.

It was the first time that it was held in the Gulf region, allowing high school and undergraduate students to have face-to-face discussions with counselors and admissions teams from some of the top universities and art schools in the world.

The National Portfolio Day Association (NPDA) was established in 1978 for the organization and planning of National Portfolio Day events. Today, the Association continues this work and has broadened its mission to provide support to professionals advising students on portfolio development for college/university admission. Consisting of more than 100 post-secondary institutions that hold regional accreditation and accreditation from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD) or its equivalent, NPDA is the only organization of its kind and its membership represents the highest standard of visual arts education in the world. 

Caitlin Murphy, Director of Admissions for VCUarts Qatar, said, “To make the most of the opportunity, attendees were encouraged to bring approximately 10 pieces of their work with them. The idea was to show and discuss their work with visiting university representatives from the US, France and the UK. The constructive feedback and general guidance that university faculty and staff provided were quite helpful to prospective students as they prepared their art portfolios as part of their university admission applications.”

The event was free and open to the public. The international schools that participated were:

The California College of the Arts, San Francisco, California

The California Institute of the Arts, Valencia, California

The Cleveland Institute of Art, Cleveland, Ohio

Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills, Michigan

Kansas City Art Institute, Kansas City, Missouri

Paris College of Art, Paris, France

School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois

School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, Boston, Massachusetts

School of Visual Arts, New York, NY

University of the Arts London, London, England

Virginia Commonwealth School of the Arts in Qatar