American University
College of Arts and Sciences
Department of Art
Katzen Arts Center, Room 101
4400 Massachusetts Ave., NW
Washington, DC 20016-8004
T +1 202 885 1670
[email protected]
The Studio Art MFA Degree Program at American University’s College of Arts and Sciences is now accepting applications for fall 2014. Our students work across media including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, multimedia, and installation.
The Program
The American University Studio Art MFA Program gives students maximum time to work in an atmosphere created by highly motivated peers and a core faculty of deeply committed, highly active professional artists.
– Our faculty: The work of our faculty has been included in dozens of major galleries and museums nationally and internationally, including the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery, Brooklyn Museum of Art, PS1 (MoMA), Artists Space, The Studio Museum of Harlem, The Contemporary Art Museum of Houston, National Academy of Sciences, Baltimore Museum of Art, Rocca Paolina (Italy), America Haus (Germany), National Academy of Design, Ammo Artists Space, Galerie35, Museo Antropologico y de Arte Contemporaneo (Ecuador), Museo Universitario Arte Contemporaneo (Mexico), and others. Their work has been written about in publications ranging from Art News and Art in America to The Brooklyn Rail and The New York Times. Faculty galleries can be viewed online.
– Our visiting artists: We also offer a unique faculty in residence program, which brings eight additional distinguished artists in residence over a graduate students’ two years at AU. Recent visiting artists include Marina Abramovic, Sanford Biggers, Susanna Coffey, Leonardo Drew, Joanne Greenbaum, Chris Hanson and Hendrika Sonnenberg, Annette Lawrence, William Powhida, David Humphrey, Sharon Louden, Robert Storr, and Stephen Westfall. There is also an extensive program of one-day visiting artists.
– Our students: Program students are selected from prestigious art programs as well as smaller programs nationally and internationally. The primary factor in admissions decisions is the portfolio. Our students are extraordinarily motivated and committed to their work. The program gives students an opportunity to intensively explore their interests as they prepare for lives as active professional artists. All graduate students exhibit work in the Katzen Arts Center and many graduates begin formally exhibiting outside the university while completing the MFA program. Numerous students’ exhibit works at prestigious venues within two years of graduation, including the Hirshhorn Museum and the Corcoran Gallery of Art, and numerous galleries, alternative spaces both in the region and beyond. Student and alumni galleries can be viewed online.
– Our facilities: The Katzen Arts Center houses the Departments of Art and Performing Arts and the American University Museum. Each MFA student receives a private studio with 24-hour year-round access. The 130,000-square-foot center includes the American University Museum, the sculpture garden, multimedia studio labs, a woodshop printmaking studios and a sculpture complex.
– Our location: Washington, D.C. is home to one of the largest concentrations of world-class museums anywhere (most of which are free and within 20 minutes of campus), as well as dozens of active galleries and alternative spaces in a vital contemporary art scene. The museums and galleries of Baltimore, Richmond, Philadelphia, and New York City are all within a four-hour drive or bus ride away.
– Our Berlin capstone: Another distinguishing characteristic of the program is that all of our students have the option of finishing their MFA program in residence in Berlin. The six-week program provides studio and meeting space in partnership with a highly respected international artist residency program; housing in shared furnished apartments in a central Berlin neighborhood; and a visiting-artist and studio-visit program focused on the experiences of working artists and active artist organizations in Berlin.
Details about the degree requirements and application procedures are available online. You can also get a look inside the studio art MFA program with a program video.
