Call for applications: Fine Arts MFA

The Master of Fine Arts program at Columbia College Chicago will prepare you to be a professional working artist. You’ll develop your art practice in your chosen medium while gaining professional skills related to the business of fine art practice. We’re especially proud of our course: Teaching Methods and Pedagogies, a unique-to-the-field graduate seminar where you gain hands-on experience learning approaches for teaching art to others. In addition, we’ve partnered with the Business and Entrepreneurship Department at Columbia to offer courses addressing contracts, project management, intellectual property, business, and legal concerns that are critical for practicing artists to understand. We want you to have options in how you structure your career, so we have designed the program with your professional success in mind.

Working with award-winning faculty, you will create a professional body of artwork while demonstrating mastery of materials and techniques and participating in critiques of your work and the work of others. As mentors, your faculty members are here to provide insights about managing your professional studio practice, negotiating the complex demands of being an artist, and making a living in the constantly changing contemporary art field. Throughout the program, you will meet regularly with visiting artists, curators, and scholars as part of our Art Now! Lecture series. The program culminates in a gallery exhibition for graduating MFA students.

The program is based in Chicago, an affordable, socially aware, culturally engaged, creative hub where artists push boundaries and make important, innovative contributions to the field. As a working artist, your success will depend on your network, and at Columbia, we will help you plan and initiate your own professional strategy for launching a career in the arts.

Graduate faculty include: Adam Brooks, Paul Catanese, Joan Giroux, Taylor Hokanson, Duncan MacKenzie, Mel Potter, Niki Nolin, and Folayemi Wilson.

Contact: Columbia College Chicago School of Graduate Studies