Fine Arts, MFA
Our MFA degree is in fine arts rather than any specific medium or discipline. Though many students are committed to an area of interest—whether painting and drawing, printmaking, sculpture, or integrated practices—they are free to explore other forms and approaches as their work evolves. Faculty and students build close relationships through structured studio visits, seminars, and informal conversations. These relationships create vital communities and support networks that endure long after graduation.
AREAS OF EMPHASIS
Pratt Institute’s M.F.A. Painting and Drawing Curriculum offers students a broad but rigorous studio practice, highlighting students’ individual development and focusing on an understanding of the significant concerns that constitute contemporary art today. From critical analysis to furthering and refining material knowledge, each student will engage in an intense studio experience, strengthening their skills and broadening their knowledge of historical, social, and critical issues through seminars, group critiques, and peer interactions. The two-year program culminates in a written thesis and solo thesis exhibition that prepares graduates to join the art world as professionals.
The Printmaking Curriculum is designed to encourage a wide variety of cross-disciplinary study. We expect that this broad based education will arm our students to effect change in the world with the art they create during their time at Pratt and beyond. The Faculty generously invest themselves in an intergenerational dialogue that is unique to New York. All practicing artists, writers, or critics, they bring with them conceptual rigor and a respect for the achievement of craft employed in their own practices. In addition, visiting artists, curators, critics, and arts professionals lecture and conduct studio visits.
The Sculpture Curriculum encourages experimentation and cross-disciplinary exploration of 3D and 4D thinking and making. Diverse approaches draw on traditional and cutting edge concepts and encompass a full spectrum of techniques.
The Integrated Practices’ (IP) curriculum is designed to provide students with rigorous conceptual and practical interdisciplinary training in studio and post-studio artistic practices. Students will be encouraged to work across disciplines such as installation, lens-based media, hybrid-media, performance, computer and web-based media, site-specific art, research-based practices, public art, social practice, and collaborative or community-oriented projects. Reflecting both emerging fields and more established contemporary forms of artistic production, IP’s curriculum is attentive to critical engagement in art and stresses the interrelations between artists, their works, and their intended audiences, with specific social, political, geographic, and cultural contexts.
| Semester 1 | Credits | |
|---|---|---|
| PHIL-604 | Aesthetics | 3 |
| Studio I: | ||
| Select one of the following: | 3 | |
| Painting and Drawing IA | ||
| Integrated Practices Ia | ||
| Sculpture IA | ||
| Printmaking IA | ||
| Studio II: | ||
| Select one of the following: | 3 | |
| Painting and Drawing IB | ||
| Integrated Practices IB | ||
| Sculpture IB | ||
| Printmaking IB | ||
| Art Criticism/Analysis/History | 3 | |
| Studio Electives | 3 | |
| Credits | 15 | |
| Semester 2 | ||
| Studio III: | ||
| Select one of the following: | 3 | |
| Painting and Drawing II | ||
| Integrated Practices II | ||
| Sculpture II | ||
| Printmaking II | ||
| Art Criticism/Analysis/History | 3 | |
| FA-699A | Symposium I | 3 |
| Liberal Arts Elective | 3 | |
| Studio Electives | 4 | |
| Credits | 16 | |
| Semester 3 | ||
| FA-699B | Symposium II | 3 |
| FA-650A | Thesis I | 3 |
| Art Criticism/Analysis/History | 3 | |
| Studio Electives | 7 | |
| Credits | 16 | |
| Semester 4 | ||
| FA-601 | Thesis Statement I | 3 |
| FA-650B | Thesis II | 3 |
| Studio Electives | 7 | |
| Credits | 13 | |
| Total Credits | 60 | |
- Students will meet contemporary standards of professional practice in their fields and have a broad understanding of how the art world functions and effective strategies for sustaining their creative practice in a complex and rapidly changing world.
- Students’ work will manifest a high level of proficiency in the use of materials and knowledge of contemporary modes of production.
- Students will demonstrate a broad critical understanding of issues in contemporary art, and situate their creative practice in its historical and contemporary contexts.
- Students will conceive and execute a capstone MFA Thesis exhibition that is rigorous in its conception and execution and demonstrates the clear development of the artist’s expressive capacities at a level comparable to successful professionals in the field.