Since 1895, the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Winthrop University has nurtured hundreds of thousands of students into creative career paths. With a 100% employment rate for all of our Arts Education majors, as well as the vigorous training that our students receive, we pride ourselves on preparing them to enter into the world as professional creatives. Together, our alumni form an impressive network of artists, curators, scholars, entrepreneurs, musicians, broadway stars, designers, art educators and more!
ArtsWinthrop alumni are routinely accepted to the country’s best degree advancing programs in art, art history, and art education and regularly secure jobs at major institutions and corporations.
We love to keep in touch and brag about our alumni! Alumni are encouraged to use this portal to keep up with the latest alumni news and to keep their profiles up to date.
The ArtsWinthrop Alumni project is in the works and more profiles will be coming soon...
*If you are an Alumnus/a, or know someone who is, please create your alumni profile today and help us build our online Alumni network!
Rachel Peterson
B.A. Dance: Performance and Choreography, 2024
Asher Johnson
B.F.A., Visual Communication Design: Illustration, 2024
Emily Burnham
B.F.A, Visual Communication Design: Illustration, 2024
David Bancroft Johnson, founder and first president of Winthrop, is recognized today as one of South Carolina's great educators.
As the superintendent of the Columbia City Schools in South Carolina, he witnessed the chronic shortage of trained teachers and conceived the idea of a teacher training institution. He traveled to Boston to lobby Robert C. Winthrop, chairman of the Peabody Education Board, a philanthropic organization involved in upgrading Southern education, to contribute money to the school's founding.
Winthrop Training School for Teachers, named in honor of its benefactor, Robert C. Winthrop, opened its doors in 1886 with 19 students and one teacher. By 1895, the school moved to Rock Hill where Johnson put emphasis on the arts with a series of concerts, plays, readings, and lectures. On his travels to Europe, Johnson formulated ideas about educational practices and how the arts could be further incorporated into Winthrop life.
Johnson, who served as Winthrop's president from 1886 until his death in 1928, never wavered in his belief in the importance of the arts for a well-rounded education. Twenty-two years after his death Johnson was chosen Educator of the Half Century by leading college and public school educators, newspaper editors, and prominent layman.
One of Johnson's lasting legacies was his commitment and support of an arts program and curriculum, which has manifested itself today in the form of the College of Visual and Performing Arts.
Below are images of arts students from the 1930s - 1990s, courtesy of the Louise Pettus Archives
