http://www.sfai.edu
The San Francisco Art Institute’s Low-residency Summer MFA program in the School of Studio Practice and the MA program in the School of Interdisciplinary Studies (Exhibition and Museum Studies; History and Theory of Contemporary Art; and Urban Studies) are currently accepting applications for summer and fall of 2009 (see below for deadlines).
SFAI’s Low-residency Summer MFA program incorporates a year-round, flexible structure designed to accommodate the schedules of active practitioners who wish to expand core artistic and critical skills while deepening elements of their studio practice. The program is also developed for those artists who seek to reenter an academic setting that offers them concentrated time in which to develop their work within a rigorous studio environment.
Whether you are a working artist, a teacher, or an art professional in another field, this program and its flexible schedule of study will facilitate the growth of your work, help you fulfill your potential as a critical thinker, support you as you explore creative options, assist you in building your portfolio of knowledge of contemporary art, and connect you to a dynamic community of accomplished artists, curators, critics, and scholars working globally. Regardless of where you live—whether in the Bay Area, the wider US, or abroad—the variety of course options and formats SFAI affords will enable you to adapt your program of study to your individual needs and to participate in the rich and creative intellectual culture pervading SFAI’s historic San Francisco campus.
Though its overall goals and objectives are the same as those for SFAI’s full-time MFA degree, the Low-residency Summer MFA program offers a flexible schedule that permits participants to study with SFAI faculty during an intensive eight-week summer residency and then to continue their studies with artists in their home communities during the fall and spring semesters. The combination of intensive summer sessions and independent guided study gives students a strong sense of artistic community while allowing them to continue to develop work according to their own situations and schedules. Students return to San Francisco for a week in early January for faculty critique of, and feedback on, the work they produced in the fall. The program’s curriculum encourages students to engage a broad range of theoretical and historical issues even as they concentrate on one of the seven exceptional areas of study that comprise SFAI’s School of Studio Practice: Design and Technology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture/Ceramics.
With the general aim of preparing students to confront, with critical acuity and creative response, an increasingly complicated geopolitical horizon, SFAI’s Master of Arts program in Exhibition and Museum Studies, in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, and in Urban Studies challenges students to move beyond the formal, chronological study of the Western canon toward an inclusively global, synchronic perspective that emphasizes conceptual and comparative approaches. Learning by example to imagine and implement innovative and unconventional solutions to problems that extend well beyond the classroom into the real world, the MA student at SFAI, in continuous dialogue with his or her peers, works with artists, critics, curators, designers, historians, philosophers, and theorists from an expansive range of disciplines. Through a combination of critiques, colloquia, intensives, practicums, seminars, studio courses, symposia, travel courses, and tutorials, the MA student prepares for a future in any number of professional fields, including arts administration, art writing/criticism, curating, gallery/museum work, cultural/public policy development, foundations professions, civic government, and PhD programs in such disciplines as cultural studies, media studies, visual studies, and art history.
The interaction between graduate students and the select list of visiting artists and scholars who come to SFAI each semester to lecture and to teach is an essential component of the graduate curriculum. Along with the Visiting Artists and Scholars Lecture Series, the Graduate Lecture Series—Spheres of Interest: Experiments in Thinking & Action—fosters open forums through which students are given direct access to the major practitioners and theorists of contemporary global art and culture.
For a detailed list of Spring 2009 lecturers from both lecture series, please go, respectively, to www.sfai.edu/vas and www.sfai.edu/spheres.
Inventive, inquisitive students from the broadest range of backgrounds and interests are invited to apply to join SFAI’s ongoing crossdisciplinary investigations of, and experiments in, contemporary global art practice and theory.
The deadline for Summer 2009 admission to SFAI’s Low-residency Summer MFA program is ongoing.
The deadline for Fall 2009 admission to SFAI’s MA program is March 1, 2009.
For more information (including important dates) about graduate, post-baccalaureate, and undergraduate admissions at SFAI, please go to www.sfai.edu/admissions.
San Francisco Art Institute
Founded in 1871, SFAI is one of the oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art in the US. Focusing on the interdependence of thinking, making, and learning, SFAI’s academic and public programs are dedicated to excellence and diversity.
SFAI’s School of Studio Practice concentrates on developing the artist’s vision through studio experiments and is based on the belief that artists are an essential part of society. It offers a BFA, an MFA, and a Post-Baccalaureate certificate in Design and Technology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, and Sculpture/Ceramics.
SFAI’s School of Interdisciplinary Studies is motivated by the premise that critical thinking and writing, informed by an in-depth understanding of theory and practice, are essential for engaging contemporary global society. It offers degree programs in Exhibition and Museum Studies (MA only), History and Theory of Contemporary Art (BA and MA), and Urban Studies (BA and MA).
SFAI’s Dual Degree MA/MFA program is ideally designed for students who seek a deep and balanced immersion in both theoretical discourse and art practice. A three-year commitment, the degree consists in an MA in History and Theory of Contemporary Art and an MFA in any area of study within the School of Studio Practice (see above).
For more information about graduate studies and other programs at SFAI, please go to www.sfai.edu/admissions, send an e-mail to [email protected], or call 415 749 4500.
For more information go to: http://www.sfai.edu
