Otis College of Art & Design
9045 Lincoln Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90045
Is your art socially engaged?
Are you interested in social values and art making? Our students are.
Otis College of Art and Design’s MFA program in Public Practice draws students from diverse backgrounds with varied interests, ethnicities, ages, and skill sets. They come to Otis with previous experience as muralists, sculptors, spoken word poets, musicians, writers, and ethnographers. They are driven to make a difference with their creativity, and they find a community of like-minded thinkers and doers in Los Angeles. Their projects take them into urban neighborhoods, rural farm communities, and across the globe. After two years in the MFA program, their final projects reflect significant growth in directions they could not have imagined when they arrived. They are continually exploring the boundaries of the question, what is social practice? They put their answers into art and actions that shape the future of the field and create lasting and meaningful change.
Under the leadership of Suzanne Lacy, renowned artist, educator, and theorist of socially engaged art, students explore a deeply participatory art that often flourishes outside the gallery and museum system. The Public Practice program supports each student’s unique direction with individually designed learning programs. Our mission is to prepare artists to contribute to equitable and pluralistic societies through art production, collaboration, and working with communities.
The core curriculum in this two-year MFA program includes courses in studio, theory, history, and professional practices. Students work alongside other MFA programs at Otis and can take courses in studio art, writing, and graphic design. As a premier art school, Otis has an extensive menu of elective courses in digital media, performance, photography, sculpture, video, design, and writing to round out a student’s individual program. Working across disciplines, students combine object making, performance, research, writing, tactical media, and community organizing in projects that integrate studio art practices with social engagement.
Our professional practices curriculum emphasizes the development of professional networks and connections around the world. Our rich network of teaching and visiting artists and curators are highly visible within contemporary art and are committed to supporting developing artists. We offer practical survival skills in grant writing, public speaking, exhibition installation, program design, and teaching. Faculty members support our alumni in the program and beyond, resulting in a network of opportunities for our alumni, including residencies, grants, exhibitions, and commissions.
Otis’ Public Practice program differs from other MFA programs. We emphasize learning to collaborate, identifying key issues in communities, and promoting public discourse. We support students in catalyzing social change in institutions, neighborhoods, on the street, and in other public contexts. Our graduates leave with specific skills that promote their individual career directions in community-based art projects, exhibitions in museums and galleries, work with civic departments and programs, teaching at all levels, and working with youth.
Our graduates also take away a developed sense of poetics and playfulness. They have a solid belief in who they are as artists, and what they want to attempt to accomplish through creative work. They understand the importance of all types of art in the civic sphere.
Our distinguished alumni include:
Claudia Borgna, whose plastic bag installations and housecleaning actions in the public are beautifully visual and often humorous, they represent her deep exploration of interdependent eco-feminism.
Carol Zou, who protests the exclusion of artists of color in national conferences while covering the façade of the Craft and Folk Art Museum with a work made from knitted yarn squares from all over the world.
Raul Baltazar, A.K.A. the Aztec Bunny, who combines Meso-American Trickster mythology with multidisciplinary projects in juvenile hall or a MacArthur park swap meet. He has even opened his home as an artistic space for healing, communication, and reflection.
Hataya Tubtim, who focuses on community engagement while examining how traditional practices—including those from her inherited Thai culture—draw people into relationships with each other.
If you aspire to change and engage the world through your art, this is the place for you. The Otis College of Art and Design Public Practice MFA is the only accredited program in the Southern California region dedicated exclusively to providing artists with advanced skills in social practice and public art. We are proud of the many ways our alumni contribute to shaping new notions of public practice and equity. Join our community of students and alumni for a two-year MFA program at Otis College of Art and Design and put your principles into action.
