Call for applications: MFA in Fine Arts

CCA’s graduate program in Fine Arts attracts an international cohort of emerging artists to work with renowned faculty and distinguished visitors in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area. Positioned within one of the top art and design colleges in the country, the two-year MFA program is characterized by a culture of critique, studio making, and social engagement. The program supports interdisciplinary practices across a variety of artistic mediums and discourses. The degree is in Fine Arts, rather than in a specific medium, and artists work across a broad range of forms including painting, sculpture, photography, print media, moving image, social practice, and installation. The program provides its students with the community, intellectual tools, and hands-on experience to meaningfully participate in a wide range of contemporary art contexts, both during the course of study and after graduation.

Culture of critique
In the spirit of exploration and growth, the program’s curriculum provides opportunities to personalize a course of study that reflects emergent practices; however, critique is central to the Fine Arts experience at CCA. Students are challenged to question materiality and process, as well as expand their thinking about form and context during dynamic group and individual studio critiques. This emphasis on theoretically and critically driven dialogue helps students reexamine and even radically change their distinct artistic positions.

Distinguished faculty
The program’s distinguished faculty is composed of internationally active artists, critics, curators, and scholars. The faculty’s extensive work with institutions and communities in many diverse art worlds gives graduate students a wide collective pool of expertise from which to draw as they formulate and refine their own individuated artistic positions.

2019–20 faculty include Kim Anno, Anthea Black, Julian Carter, Nelson Chan, Susanne Cockrell, Brian Conley, Kota Ezawa, Josh Faught, Mia Feuer, Jeanne Finley, Karen Fiss, Linda Geary, James Gobel, Barney Haynes, Glen Helfand, Angela Hennessy, Anthony Huberman, Clay Jensen, Jordan Kantor (Chair), Lynn Marie Kirby, Jaime Knight, Christina Linden, Nathan Lynch, Elizabeth Mangini, Aspen Mays, Ranu Mukherjee, Michelle Murillo, Kim Nguyen, Alison O’Daniel, Maria Porges, Frances Richard, Peter Simensky, Allison Smith, Keith Thomas, Ignacio Valero, Deborah Valoma, Sam Vernon, James Voorhies, Christine Wang, and Karla Wozniak.

Recent visiting artists and theorists have included Judith Butler, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Shannon Ebner, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mickalene Thomas, An-My Lê, Nairy Baghramian, Ralph Rugoff, Collier Schorr, Tania Bruguera, Deana Lawson, Walid Raad, Thomas Demand, and Kai Althoff.

Applications submitted by January 10, 2020, receive priority scholarship consideration. Please review the application guidelines before applying.

For more information, visit MFA Fine Arts at CCA or email eshallman [​at​] cca.edu.