Spring 2021 Graduate Seminar lecture series

The ArtCenter Graduate Art MFA program is pleased to announce its Spring 2021 Graduate Art guest lecture series, organized by Jack Bankowsky.

All lectures are free, open to the public, and, due to the pandemic, will take place via Zoom. Check our website to confirm dates and times, for further instructions on RSVP-ing for Zoom access, and for more information about the Graduate Art program.

Spring 2021 seminar schedule
January 19, 4:30pm PST: Nan Goldin in conversation with David Velasco
January 26, 4:30pm PST: Thomas Eggerer
February 5, 10:30am PST: Jan Tumlir presents Lucy McKenzie *
February 9, 4:30pm PST: Jason Farago
February 19, 10:30am PST: Cecilia Pavón *
February 23, 4:30pm PST: Cameron Rowland
March 5, 10:30am PST: Quinn Latimer presents Anna Daučíková *
March 9, 4:30pm PST: Wayne Koestenbaum
March 16, 4:30pm PST: Jason E. Smith presents Molly Nesbit
March 23, 4:30pm PST: Kenneth Tam
March 30, 4:30pm PST: Hannah Black
April 13, 4:30pm PST: Tobi Haslett presents Margo Jefferson
April 20, 4:30pm PST: Wade Guyton in conversation with Jack Bankowsky

* These talks will take place on a Friday rather than the customary Tuesday.

Support for this series was generously provided by the following: Jack Shear, Brenda R. Potter, Beth Rudin DeWoody, Sprüth Magers, Blum & Poe, Hannah Hoffman, Alan Hergott, and David Kordansky

Graduate Art is an interdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts program that encourages divergent ideas and methods. With a core faculty of 10 internationally recognized artists and writers, a dynamic visiting faculty, and a total of 35 students, we have one of the lowest faculty-to-student ratios among comparable MFA programs. The result is an intense work environment where concentrated art making is assured equally concentrated and careful attention, whether within specific disciplines or among them: in film, video, photography, painting, sculpture, installation, performance and everything in between.

One-on-one studio visits with faculty are fundamental to our program, in addition to rigorous critical, academic, and practical coursework. We extend our reach internationally, inviting artists and writers―famous and infamous―as well as historians and philosophers for weekly seminars.

Los Angeles, one of the world’s great art capitals, provides a vivid context for the world-class design school to which we are connected, with leading-edge software and hardware technology and the equipment that goes with it. On site, we provide students with individual studios, a fabrication shop, numerous galleries, and dedicated computing and moving-image production labs. We make our dedicated, public exhibition spaces and project rooms available to all candidates, from the first term through the fourth, when every graduating student mounts a final solo show.

In March 2020, when pandemic sheltering began, Graduate Art’s core faculty made the decision that to graduate our MFAs with integrity it was crucial their planned final exhibits happen in the gallery spaces they desired. These final exhibits, as well as the various, related kinds of studio work required, were mapped onto the summer and fall terms.

Working with ArtCenter’s President and Provost, Graduate Art’s graduating and first-year MFAs were able to pilot and research studio use, in a safe, staggered, scheduled manner, for the college as a whole, and they worked in the graduate studios throughout the summer term. The graduating MFAs demonstrated inventiveness and perseverance, and they installed their vibrant final exhibits in our numerous MFA galleries.

Fall 2020 brought renewed pandemic strictures, but Graduate Art found alternative ways of working, and our students rose to the challenge. We strongly believe that our MFAs had some of the most dynamic opportunities available on the west coast for pursuing their creative work.

*Images above: Left to right, top: Wade Guyton (Photo: courtesy of the artist); Margo Jefferson (Photo: Mike McGregor and The Guardian); Nan Goldin (Photo: Megan Kapler); Hannah Black (Photo: Courtesy of the artist). Middle: Kenneth Tam (Photo: Christian Carroll); Wayne Koestenbaum (Photo: Ebru Yildiz); Anna Daučíková (Photo: Courtesy of the artist); Quinn Latimer (Photo: Natasha Papadopoulou). Bottom: Tobi Haslett (Photo: Courtesy of the writer); Jason Farago (Photo: Ian Epstein); Lucy McKenzie (Photo: Mauricio Guillén); David Velasco (Photo: Marcelo Gomes).