The Faculty of Visual Arts and Design (FAVD) belongs to the ensemble of three integrated faculties within the George Enescu National University of Arts in Iași, along with the Faculty of Theater and the Faculty of Interpretation, Composition and Theoretical Music Studies. FAVD mission is to train visual artists and theorists to participate creatively in contemporary cultural life and in the circulation of Romanian and global art values. Founded in 1860 as a School of Painting, which became in 1864 the National School of Belle Arte according to the Western model, the first institution of higher level in Romanian art education has operated continuously until now, despite the times during the communist period, when the Academy of Fine Arts Iasi (with the title adopted in 1931) was transformed into the Faculty of Drawing (1950), and then into the Faculty of Fine Arts (1978). Since 2012, it has been named the Faculty of Visual Arts and Design.