Education

Silpakorn University is presently under the supervision of the Office of the Higher Education Commission, the Ministry of Education and was originally established as the School of Fine Arts under the Fine Arts Department in 1933. Primarily, the school has offered the only studying programs in Painting and Sculpture by waiving tuition fees for the government officers and the students. Its inception and development owed much to an almost lifetime devotion of Professor Silpa Bhirasri, an Italian sculptor (previously called Professor Corrado Feroci) who was commissioned during the reign of King Rama VI to work in the Fine Arts Department. He subsequently enlarged the classes to include greater members of the interested public before taking his initiative in setting up the School of Fine Arts. The School gradually developed and was officially accorded a new status and named, Silpakorn University, on 12 October 1943. In the early phase of its development, its inaugural faculty was the Faculty of Painting and Sculpture (presently is named the Faculty of Painting Sculpture and Graphic Arts). Since 1955, the Faculty of Thai Architecture was established (later changed the name into the Faculty of Architecture) and two more faculties were consecutively established to accommodate the university’s growing academic interests, namely, the Faculty of Archaeology and the Faculty of Decorative Arts in the following years.