Application deadline for fall 2015 admission: January 15, 2015
University of California, Davis
Art Studio MFA Program
Department of Art & Art History
One Shields Avenue
Davis, CA 95616-8528
T +1 530 752 8710
The Art Studio MFA Program at UC Davis is a two-year, critically engaged studio program that provides an opportunity for interdisciplinary study in the visual arts. As part of a small tight-knit community, students explore a wide range of media and approaches to studio practice.
Faculty
The entire Art Studio program faculty share responsibility for the graduate program. Current faculty members include Tom Bills, Darrin Martin, Hearne Pardee, Lucy Puls, Annabeth Rosen, Youngsuk Suh, Robin Hill, Tim Hyde, and Gina Werfel. Graduate seminars provide the opportunity to study theory through the lens of studio practice as well as support students in their writing and studio-related research. Students also have the opportunity to work one-on-one with faculty through quarterly independent study classes.
Facilities
The Art Studio program has facilities for drawing, ceramics, painting, photography, printmaking, video, and sculpture. Graduate students receive large, individual studios on campus with 24/7 access.
Visiting artist lecture series
A dynamic, interdisciplinary, visiting artist lecture series is a key component of the Art Studio MFA curriculum, providing students with the opportunity to conduct studio visits with world-renowned artists, critics and curators. Past visitors have included Jerry Saltz, Phong Bui, Joan Jonas, Gregory Amenoff, Mary Lucier, Robert Storr, Vito Acconci, Ken Johnson, Jed Perl, Fred Tomaselli, Kalup Linzy, Terry Winters, Larry Rinder, Jennifer and Kevin McCoy, Rochelle Feinstein, Dana Schutz, Lucy Lippard, Angela Dufresne, Ryan Trecartin, Shana Moulton, Rico Gatson, and Rirkrit Tiravanija among others.
Financial support
The Art Studio MFA program offers substantial financial support through paid teaching assistant positions each quarter and through Art Studio program fellowships, made possible by generous private endowments. Students may also apply for university support through Graduate Studies Travel Awards, the Davis Humanities Institute, and the University of California Institute for Research in the Arts.
UC Davis is an academic partner of The Headlands Center for the Arts graduate fellowship program, which offers a year-long artist residency for one of our MFA graduates each year. Over the years, graduates of the program have won many nationally competitive graduate fellowships and post-graduate awards from the Dedalus Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, Skowhegan, Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, the Vermont Studio Center, the Roswell-Artist in Residence Program, and Eyebeam.
About UC Davis
UC Davis offers an array of programs that draw upon its wide range of specialized academic fields. By stimulating cross-disciplinary approaches and using its distinctive graduate groups, UC Davis continues to follow and redefine the mandate of a major research university and is committed to the land-grant tradition on which it was founded, which holds that the broad purpose of a university is service to people and society.
The university is an unparalleled resource in all disciplines of research to broaden and deepen the work of an artist. Graduate students in the Art Studio program have many opportunities to interact with their peers in Art History, Cinema and Technocultural Studies, Music, Performance Studies, and Design, through facilities/labs, exhibitions, lecture series, and course offerings.
The much anticipated Jan Shrem and Maria Manetti Shrem Museum of Art will open in 2016. It will be an institution dedicated to combining vanguard artistic and curatorial innovation with audience engagement. Exploring new means to connect visitors with art and participating in the process of art are two aspects of the new museum that are at the very center of its vision. The museum will encourage interdisciplinary exchange, provide means to make an impact on curricular development and create informal educational opportunities.
Located in agricultural landscape of the Sacramento Valley, UC Davis is within easy reach of Berkeley, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, the Pacific Ocean, the Coastal Redwoods, Yosemite National Forest, Lake Tahoe, and Mt. Lassen.
