Graduate students Adam Crosson from The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) and Martha Hviid from the Royal College of Art (RCA) will participate in the inaugural year of an exciting exchange program between the two institutions. Students from all graduate studio art areas at UT Austin were considered for the exchange program. This first year, RCA considered sculpture graduate students, and in the coming years will open it to all areas within the School of Fine Art.
Crosson and Hviid were both evaluated by their faculty and selected for the exchange through their work and proposed research. They will literally be exchanging places, including studios. This international exchange will be an enriching experience for Crosson and Hviid, as well as for the hosting faculty and students from both institutions. Austin and London are two destinations that offer complex cultures, differing urbanism, and expansive resources.
About The University of Texas at Austin
The Department of Art and Art History at The University of Texas at Austin is one of the largest and most diverse in the country. It includes programs in Art Education, Art History, Design, and Studio Art. Within the Studio Art program, 20 full-time Studio Art faculty work closely with less than 30 graduate students in the areas of Painting, Photography, Printmaking, Sculpture and Extended Media, and Transmedia. To this mix, the department’s visiting artist and critic program brings acclaimed professionals from outside the university into graduate studios. The department operates as part of a tier one research university within which profound resources and tools are made available to students and faculty alike.
In a challenging interdisciplinary environment, MFA students often work across media and in close collaboration with one another, exploring the potential overlaps and depths of established disciplines. Students work with department faculty to fine-tune existing skill sets and develop new approaches, conceptual and technical, to their studio practice. As part of the diverse intellectual community that makes up The University of Texas at Austin, students have access to resources across campus allowing for a richly informed approach to their artistic practice.
About the Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art in London is one of the world’s most influential postgraduate universities of art and design. Specializing in teaching and research, the RCA offers the degrees of MA, MPhil and PhD across the disciplines of fine art, applied art, design, communications, and humanities. There are over 1,400 Master and Doctoral students and more than 200 professionals interacting with them—including scholars, leading art and design practitioners, along with specialists, advisers, and distinguished visitors.
Within the School of Fine Art, faculty and students understand that there is a wider fine art intelligence that falls outside the College structure. Within the Sculpture program, debates around painting, often via drawing, and the raw side of printing are closely associated in the minds of good students. The ‘play’ involved in the processes of production is as much technical as it is philosophical. Mischief, curiosity, and fluidity can affect change and shape a future. Fine Art students are students of the whole College; collaboration and cross-disciplinary debate is actively encouraged. Diversity is not about dilution but rather a means to add rigor to debate and understanding.
