Art Writing Summer Intensive

2000 USD/2 undergraduate studio credits

Apply today! 

This intensive two-week seminar is open to artists, writers, and other arts professionals who seek to expand their art writing and critical thinking skills. Part creative writing, part scholarly investigation, art writing is an ever-evolving field in which philosophy, poetry, art history, and, at times, fiction, coalesce into a lively and lucid form of writing. Art writing is a way in which critical thinkers from a variety of backgrounds can broaden the purview of their writing practice.

Visits to artists’ studios, museums, and galleries will enliven participants’ writing and workshop sessions. Our exceptional faculty and guests, comprised of critics, poets, and interdisciplinary writers, will foster an environment in which participants can explore new lines of thought and critical inquiry. In this intensive, participants will refine their writing skills through exercises and assignments that foreground the short-form review, essay, and interview formats. Participants’ acuity of vision and linguistic precision will be challenged and developed through intensive group and one-on-one workshops.

The Art Writing Summer Intensive is housed within the MFA Art Writing program at the School of Visual Arts, located steps away from the Chelsea Gallery District. Participants will have access to the Art Writing Research Library, computer workstations, printing station, reading room, and seminar room, in which group workshops and writing sessions will take place.

For more information about the Summer Intensive, contact us at artwriting [​at​] sva.edu.

The two-year MFA Art Writing program at the School of Visual Arts is also now accepting applications for fall 2017.

Situated in the heart of New York City and at the intersection of words and images, the Art Writing MFA program at SVA offers students the opportunity to bring their language into a complex meeting with the visual arts and the ideas that inform it.
  
From its inception, this program has also had a special emphasis on the history and future of the image. The writers of tomorrow must study images in all of their manifestations in order to better understand how we are subject to them.
 
In addition to our exceptional core faculty—including chair David Levi Strauss, Nancy Princenthal, Dejan Lukic, Jennifer Krasinski, Thomas Beard, Debra Bricker Balken, Chuck Stein, and Lynne Tillman—we invite many writers, critics, philosophers, editors, artists, and art historians in each year to give lectures and to meet with our students individually and in small groups. Recent guests include: Holland Cotter, Michael Taussig, Boris Groys, Cuauhtémoc Medina, T. J. Clark, Peter Schjeldahl, Lucy Lippard, Amy Sillman, Linda Nochlin, Anne Waldman, Hilton Als, and Dave Hickey.
 
Our students come from all over the world—Nigeria, Russia, China, India, Pakistan, Iran, Turkey, Lebanon, Israel, Brazil, Ecuador, Ireland, France, England, and Canada—as well as from around the United States. They also come from a wide variety of backgrounds and education, with undergraduate degrees in Art, Art History, Comparative Literature, Philosophy, and Creative Writing, among others. What they have in common is intellectual curiosity, a passion for art, and the desire to write well.
 
It is obviously a big advantage to have such a program situated in the heart of New York City, amidst the greatest concentration of artists and art activity in the world. The connections made in the program between students and others working in the field are invaluable and long lasting.

To see responses from 15 of our alumni to the question “What Is Criticism, Now?” in the December 2016/January 2017 issue of the Brooklyn Rail, go to brooklynrail.org.
 
We are now accepting applications for the Fall 2017 term. Generous departmental scholarships, as well as other forms of assistance, are available. Contact us at artwriting [​at​] sva.edu, or T (212) 592 2408 for further information or to set up an appointment.
 
To see sample programs, faculty bios, news, the online journal, recordings of our popular lecture series, and admissions procedures, go to artwriting.sva.edu.