Application deadline: January 5, 2021
Pratt Institute’s interdisciplinary MFA in Fine Arts is accepting applications now for the fall 2021 semester. The program was ranked among the top 15 nationally out of more than 200 graduate fine arts programs by U.S. News and World Reports and ninth on the 2020 Best Colleges List by GradReports.com.
Pratt Institute’s MFA program provides advanced education for artists supported by adistinguished faculty, exceptional facilities, and a supportive community of peers. Drivenby exploration and enriched by the abundance and inspiration of New York City, Pratt’s critically engaged faculty respond to each student’s practice, fostering their development within the diverse cultures and myriad ways of contemporary art-making.
Interdisciplinary program
Pratt’s MFA in Fine Arts degree supports interdisciplinary practice. Many students remain committed to the area of interest they identified when entering the program (painting and drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and integratedpractices). Graduate students are free to explore other forms and approaches as their work evolves, however. Faculty and students build close relationships through structured studio visits, seminars, and informal conversations. These relationships create a vital community and supportive network that endures long after graduation.
Curriculum
The curriculum is rigorous and flexible, offering wide latitude for exploration while fostering critical perspectives and a deeper understanding of the histories, issues, cultural and transdisciplinary contexts that inform art practices today. With the art world on our doorstep, there are many opportunities to meet influential contemporary curators, critics, and cultural producers. Professional practice education is integrated throughout the program, providing students the tools they need to make their way as professionalartists and cultural innovators after graduation.
Faculty
Our faculty are active professional artists distinguished by their numerous national and international exhibitions and inclusion in major publications. Many have also received significant awards from prestigious organizations such as the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Creative Capital, and the New York Foundation for the Arts.
Facilities
Graduate Fine Arts facilities are outstanding. Students have individual studios located in the Pfizer Building, a renovated industrial building that houses our fabrication shops, temporary exhibition spaces, seminar rooms, and a student lounge. Campus facilities include a fully equipped woodshop, metal shop, print shop, ceramics studios, darkrooms, and a digital output lab with high-resolution scanners and printers, as well as dedicated campus galleries. There are many opportunities to show work in various traditional and non-traditional spaces, and students are encouragedto curate self-initiated exhibitions. In both fall and spring, MFA students host a public open studio event. In the spring, second-year students mount individual thesis capstone exhibitions.
Community & programming
We are a vibrant, socially-engaged, and generous community! The department initiates many discussions around contemporary issues and collaborates with arts organizations to ensure active participation in the cultural life of the neighborhood and beyond. Initiatives include Project Third (P3) and a new fellowship in Civic Engagement. P3 is a forum for students, visiting artists, academics, and activists whose work is research-based, socially-engaged, and politically involved. P3 promotes interdisciplinary collaboration across the institute and fosters meaningful collaborations with external communities. P3’s programs include artist residencies, exhibitions, workshops, seminars, performances, lectures, and student-led engagements.
This fall, we welcome our inaugural Fellow in Civic Engagement, Amy Khoshbin, and present a new Civic Engagement Series (CES) focused on the 2020 general election. The CES consists of workshops and conversations with contemporary artists, grassroots organizers, and local electoral candidates exploring ways of taking action at the local level, both at the polls and in the streets, using creative and performative strategies.
Visiting artists, curators, and critics
Besides a regular schedule of studio visits by faculty members, the department’s Visiting Artists Lecture Series (VALS) brings internationally renowned artists to campus to give public lectures and conduct individual studio visits with graduate students. Recent artists include: Diana Al-Hadid, Korakrit Arunanaondchai, The Black School, Pradeep Dalal, Rochelle Feinstein, Scherezade Garcia, Savannah Knoop, Alexis Rockman Ibrahim Mahama, Jill Magid, Narcissister, Lavar Munroe, Pradeep Dalal, and James Hyde. The Pratt Artists League (known as PAL) is the Fine Arts graduate student organization. They invite artists, curators, and critics for studio visits, and they organize open studios and other student-generated programming and exhibitions.
Alumni
Fine Arts alumni thrive. Graduates have been accepted into prestigious residencies such as Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture; Black Rock, Senegal; MacDowell Colony; the Sharpe-Walentas Studio Program; the Elizabeth Foundation; and the Whitney Independent Study Program. Our alumni have exhibited at museums such as the Brooklyn Museum, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and Museum of Modern Art and national and international galleries.
Alumni have received grants from around the world, such as Anonymous Was A Woman, Creative Capital, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant, and the John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship. Alumni work is represented in international public and private collections, including the Guggenheim Museum, the Studio Museum of Harlem, the National Gallery in Washington D.C., Hara Museum of Contemporary Art in Tokyo, Japan, and the Panza Collection in Varese, Italy.
Graduates find their place in the world as writers, gallerists, curators, and working in the community as social justice advocates and change-makers. Many have careers as educators in museums, high schools and colleges of higher education. Others forge their paths and become innovators in many emerging creative fields. Graduating from Pratt’s Fine Arts MFA program is just the beginning!
Applying: View admissions requirements.
Generous scholarships: Graduate scholarships are available to incoming domestic and international students based on merit and are awareded to eligible students upon acceptance.
Request information: Join our mailing list to receive a full-color viewbook filled with student work, curricula, and more.
Contact: T 800 331 0834 / admissions [at] pratt.edu
Pratt Institute is ranked among the top design schools by BusinessWeek and fifth in theworld out of 50 art and design colleges by QS World University Rankings by Subject.Top-ranked programs, a distinguished faculty of professional artists and designers, andan ideally located campus in Brooklyn, New York, make Pratt an excellent choice forgraduate study.
See Pratt’s response to COVID-19 at pratt.edu (Back to Pratt).
