MFA Thesis Exhibition: Bild—Build

The University of Pennsylvania’s 2018 graduating class of Master of Fine Arts students will present their thesis exhibition in the Icebox Project Space of the Crane Arts Building in Philadelphia. The exhibition represents the culmination of two years’ study at Penn and will be curated by the Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber Curator of the ICA Philadelphia, Alex Klein.  

PennMFA thesis exhibition artists: Lauren Altman, Danièle Dennis, Junyuan Feng, Erlin Geffrard, Adrienne Hall, Jiayi Liu, Jiaqi Pan, Zoya Siddiqui, James Sprang, Heryk Tomassini, Kasey Toomey, Monika Uchiyama, Eric Yue 

Exhibition curator Alex Klein
Alex Klein is the Dorothy and Stephen R. Weber (CHE’60) Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art, University of Pennsylvania. Recent exhibitions at ICA include Suki Seokyeong Kang: Black Mat Oriole (2018) co-curated with Kate Kraczon; Broadcasting: EAI at ICA (2018) co-organized with Electronic Arts Intermix (EAI); Nathalie Du Pasquier’s first museum survey BIG OBJECTS NOT ALWAYS SILENT (2017) co-organized with the Kunsthalle Vienna; Myths of the Marble (2017) co-organized with the Henie Onstad Kunstsenter, Norway; Barbara Kasten: Stages (2015), the first major survey of the artist’s work, and Julia Feyrer and Tamara Henderson: Consider the Belvedere (2015). From 2013 to 2015 she served as an agent in the Carnegie Museum of Art’s Hillman Photography Initiative where she co-curated the exhibition Antoine Catala: Distant Feel (2015, with Tina Kukielski) and co-edited the publication Shannon Ebner: Auto Body Collision (CMOA, 2015). She has lectured widely and her writing has been published in numerous collections, including Public Servants: Art and the Crisis of the Common Good (MIT Press, 2016), The Human Snapshot (Sternberg Press/CCS Bard, 2013), How Soon Is Now?  (LUMA, 2012), and the critical volume on photography Words Without Pictures (LACMA/Aperture, 2010), which she also edited. Before joining the ICA in 2011 she held positions in the Wallis Annenberg Photography Department at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Roski School of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. In addition to her curatorial work, she is an exhibiting artist and the co-founder, with designer Mark Owens, of the editorial project and publishing imprint Oslo Editions.

Penn MFA program
The Master of Fine Arts program at Penn is focused on the professional development of visual artists. Through workshops, seminar courses, international residency opportunities and interactions with curators, writers and artists, the program provides an open intellectual framework to foster independent methods of artistic research. In addition to seminars within the Fine Arts department, graduate students are encouraged to pursue topics of science and the humanities through an impressive selection of courses offered across the university.

Download the PennMFA program catalog

For program inquires, contact: mfa [​at​] design.upenn.edu or T (215) 898 8374

Icebox Project Space hours: Wednesday–Saturday 12-6pm