Program: Visual Arts, MFA - Clark University

Master of Fine Arts in Visual Arts Overview

The low-residency MFA in Visual Arts is a terminal degree that provides an accessible and high-quality graduate experience in the visual arts (including film production) to students on a national level.

Through the use of an innovative and dynamic faculty mentorship teaching model, students will experience one-on-one faculty and artist-mentor supervision over the course of the program. This combination provides students both a theoretical understanding and extended studio time to perfect their craft under expert and professional supervision. Students will also have the benefit of five intensive residencies: four before the beginning of each academic semester, and one thesis residency where they present their master’s portfolio.

Graduates from this program will be competitive in different career paths that include teaching in university and college settings; teaching and learning (K-12); design in industry; and art curation and archival and museum collections as well as an independent artistic practice.

Program Requirements

Completion of 4 academic semesters including attendance and participation in all 5 residencies and post-residency studio and academic work for a total of 16 units.

Residencies: 4 units

Studio: 6 units, 1.5 units per academic semester

Academic/Research: 6 units, 1.5 units per academic semester

The program concludes with a student’s thesis.

MFAV 3999 - Residency V: Final Thesis

Program Learning Outcomes

• Students will demonstrate mastery of a given artistic medium. This mastery will include both a technical and aesthetic dimension. Students will demonstrate this by producing artworks throughout the program that shows a consistent and definitive perspective within the students selected discipline. These artworks will inherently vary from artist to artist in both substance and media.

• Students will present their work within broader historical and theoretical perspectives. This demonstration will show an awareness of and engagement with relevant societal, aesthetic or personal issues as defined by the studio of practice.

• Students will exhibit their studio work at the final residency to show evidence of their capacity to communicate to a broad audience through exhibitions and staged presentations of their craft.

• The thesis presentation at the end of the program will demonstrate the student’s intellectual command of aspects of the artist’s culture and its theoretical underpinnings.

• Each student’s final artist talk is intended to allow the student to show competency in presenting and discussing their work within the intellectual and aesthetic contexts presented in their written thesis.