Call for applications: MFA in Fine Arts

CCA campuses are located in Huichin and Yelamu, also known as Oakland and San Francisco, on the unceded territories of Chochenyo and Ramaytush Ohlone peoples. Learn More

Priority deadline for scholarship consideration: January 10, 2021

California College of the Arts (CCA) is now accepting applications for the graduate program in Fine Arts. 
T +1 415-551-9213
graduateprograms [​at​] cca.edu​

Interdisciplinary Artistic Community
The graduate program in Fine Arts attracts an international cohort of emerging artists to work with renowned faculty and distinguished visitors in the culturally diverse San Francisco Bay Area. Positioned within one of the top art and design colleges in the country, the two-year MFA program is characterized by a culture of critique, studio making, and social engagement. The program supports interdisciplinary practices across a variety of artistic mediums and discourses. The degree is in Fine Art, rather than in a specific medium, and artists work across a broad range of forms including painting, sculpture, photography, printmedia, moving image, social practice, and installation. The program provides its students with the community, intellectual tools, and hands-on experience to meaningfully participate in a wide range of contemporary art contexts, both during the course of study and after graduation.

Culture of Critique
In the spirit of exploration and growth, the program’s curriculum provides opportunities to personalize a course of study that reflects emergent practices; however, critique is central to the Fine Arts experience at CCA. Students are challenged to question materiality and process, as well as expand their thinking about form and context during dynamic group and individual studio critiques. This emphasis on theoretically and critically driven dialogue helps students reexamine and even radically change their distinct artistic positions.

Distinguished Faculty
The program’s distinguished faculty is composed of internationally active artists, critics, curators, and scholars. The faculty’s extensive work with institutions and communities in many diverse art worlds gives graduate students a wide collective pool of expertise from which to draw as they formulate and refine their own individuated artistic positions.

2020–2021 faculty include Kim Anno, Dodie Bellamy, Meg Bisineer, Juana Berrío, Anthea Black, Monica Bravo, Julian Carter, Nelson Chan, Susanne Cockrell, Brian Conley, Kota Ezawa, Josh Faught, Mia Feuer, Jeanne Finley, Ren Fiss, Terri Friedman, Linda Geary, James Gobel, Barney Haynes, Glen Helfand, Angela Hennessy, Genevieve Hyacinthe, David Huffman, Jordan Kantor (Chair), Lynn Marie Kirby, Jaime Knight, Nathan Lynch, Elizabeth Mangini, Aspen Mays, Ranu Mukherjee, Michelle Murillo, Kim Nguyen, Alison O’Daniel, Maria Porges, Marina Pugliese, Clifford Rainey, Peter Simensky, Keith Thomas, Mark Thompson, Deborah Valoma, Sam Vernon, James Voorhies, Christine Wang, and Karla Wozniak.

Recent visiting artists and theorists have included Judith Butler, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Jacopo Crevelli Visconti, Amy Yao, Shannon Ebner, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mickalene Thomas, An-My Lê, Nairy Baghramian, Ralph Rugoff, Collier Schorr, Tania Bruguera, Deana Lawson, Walid Raad, Thomas Demand, and Kai Althoff.

Applications are now open. Please view the application guidelines first.

For more information, visit MFA Fine Arts at CCA or email eshallman [​at​] cca.edu.