Rooted in critically engaged studio practice, the Graduate Program in Fine Arts enables students to gain a deeper understanding of their own artistic ideas and vision. The curriculum addresses the various ways in which artistic practices relate to and affect larger social and cultural landscapes while developing the individual skills that students need to pursue careers in the visual arts.
The program explores both the specifics of particular disciplines and the points of interaction and overlap among disciplines. Interdisciplinary seminars and courses in the history of contemporary art and ideas provide a grounding in critical theory and practice, while critiques with specialist faculty members offer extended dialogue in students' chosen areas of ceramics, furniture, glass, jewelry/metal arts, media arts, painting/drawing, photography, printmaking, sculpture, social practice, or textiles.
For social practice students, three studio practice units each semester are dedicated to workshops that are structured around group discussions, site visits, theoretical readings, and individual meetings with a variety of visiting instructors. Immersive laboratory courses are conducted in intensive sessions over two consecutive weekends with a high-profile visiting artist and a small group of students; the visiting artist meets individually with students during the week. Students will encounter a wide range of local, national, and international artists and arts professionals—including curators, critics, and writers—with a view to exploring and questioning the potential of contemporary visual culture.
Each Fine Arts graduate student (except those in social practice) is assigned an individual studio for four consecutive semesters, including the summer between their first and second years. Students have 24-hour access to their studios. Social practice students share a common workspace with visiting artists and resident faculty.
The college has state-of-the-art facilities for digital media; editing facilities for film, video, and sound; darkrooms and photography facilities; a spray booth; a model shop (including a laser cutter and a 3D prototyping machine); a materials library; an alternative-materials shop; and facilities for printmaking, glass, ceramics, metals, woodworking, and textiles.
