ABOUT THE MFA

Our M.F.A. program is small and contact with the faculty is unusually generous. While Graduate Teaching Assistantships are available, it is important to understand that the faculty of the Painting and Drawing Area is focused on working with young artists who intend to be professional, practicing artists beyond the umbrella of the University Culture. We are not primarily interested in teaching students to teach or to enter Academia with it’s currently meager job markets. As a faculty, we are cognizant of the audience(s) for which Art is made and we understand the art making process as a conversation which includes audience as a member. Each semester, the Painting + Drawing Area requires that the student studies with one faculty member from Painting, one from Drawing, and the Artist-in-Residence as the core studio requirement. (It is important to see the AIR Faculty section of our site.) After two years, the student will have studied for at least one semester with each of the six resident faculty, and with four different Artists-in-Residence, insuring a sound understanding of the many ideas and sensibilities that comprise the contemporary art world in all its exciting unruliness. At this point, it is possible, but not necessary, to restrict one’s concentration to either a Painting or a Drawing Concentration.

The AIR Seminar offered at the Graduate Level emphasizes class discussion of readings and student presentations directly applicable to the contemporary art environment and informed by the experience and sensibility of the AIR. It is expected that this course be taught from conviction as much as objectivity, and that the student gains from an exposure to four such classes in a two year period.

The M.F.A. curriculum covers three years, the last of which the student works more independently with a student selected faculty committee meant to stimulate a rigorous discussion and feedback relevant to the student’s work. A thesis exhibition, paper about the work and an orals examination caps the year. We expect our graduates to be articulate, knowledgeable about contemporary and historical art, traveled, and able to make work that can be identified as uniquely their own. We award degrees on that basis.