The department of Fine Arts was, at the time of founding of the Academy of Arts, due to practical needs, directed more towards educating professionals that would primarily be fine arts pedagogues. However, as it was clear that the ones who should convey knowledge of fine arts should themselves acquire professional creative experience, the study programmes were soon oriented towards artistic profiles and modified in accordance with the demands of the times. Thus, depending on their orientation, the first students completed their studies as graduate painters, sculptors and graphic artists – fine arts pedagogues. Establishing the identity of the Academy of Arts through their work, as early as those first years, were painters Milivoj Nikolajević, Boško Petrović, and Isidor Vrsajkov, sculptors Jovan Soldatović, Milutin Vidić, and Ljubomir Denković, as well as graphic artists Milan Stanojev, Halil Tikveša, Živko Đak and Miodrag Nagorni. As fine art itself is a living organism in permanent metamorphosis, the study programmes have been constantly enriched with up-to-date contemporary content in the same way. In order to satisfy the growing interest in fine art studies, new classes were created at the existing professional orientations, and new study programmes were launched as well. Competent teachers were employed for the realisation of these programmes. Graphic Communications, as a new, highly attractive study programme, had its first student enrolment in 1992, and New Media Art and Photography in 2002. Drawing, as an independent study programme is available only at the master level in the previous (pre-Bologna) period, and now it is present within regular master studies. In 2016 a new study programmes have been accredited: Illustration and Interior Design at Undergraduate and Master studies. Study programme Conservation and Restoration of Works of Fine and Applied Arts at Master studies was accredited in 2017. Doctoral studies in art were accredited in 2015 when the first generations of students were enrolled at two study programmes: Fine Arts and Applied Arts and Design.
The teaching process is enhanced with relevant information from contemporary fine art practice and students adopt a wide variety of knowledge during their studies. By choosing a certain study programme they do not remain denied of content that is characteristic of other study programmes and orientations. They can master it through a wide range of elective subjects. These are offered, along with the compulsory subjects that are the very core of every study programme, at the start of each academic year, and the students can select them in accordance with their own affinities.
A symbiosis of the experience of more senior professors and the energy of younger teachers and associates, along with a developed awareness that the process of improvement is a permanent one make the teaching process at the Department of Fine Arts a consistent and high-quality one, but also flexible and dynamic, because the collective and individual work with the students are regularly intertwined.
Today, the former students of the Academy of Arts in Novi Sad are successful fine art artists and are active on all five continents, inventive lecturers at different educational levels- from elementary school to doctoral art studies – as well as managers or constructive members of teams at cultural institutions.
Fine Arts Department operates through two study programmes at Undergraduate Studies (eight Modules), three study programmes at Master studies (nine modules) and two study programmes at Doctoral studies in Art:
