Art Degrees Online

At the Museum School, we welcome questions—and also opportunities to see your art.

Applying to the School requires a number of materials and steps. First of all, we’d love to meet you and see your work. To arrange a visit, including a meeting with one of our admissions counselors, call 800-643-6078. Another option: visit us at Portfolio Days. You’ll also need to submit a portfolio of your work as part of your application.

Please note that if you’re applying to the five-year Combined-Degree Program or the Master of Art in Teaching in Art Education, you must apply to the Museum School and Tufts University simultaneously.

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, is committed to helping talented and motivated students pay for school. Each year, 75 to 80 percent of all SMFA students receive financial aid. Total aid awarded for the 2007–2008 year was $12,182,740, of which $5,160,206 was awarded directly from the School.

The School offers both need-based and merit-based aid. Merit scholarships are awarded on the strength of a student’s portfolio and potential for growth as an artist in the Museum School community. All students are reviewed for merit scholarship if they meet the admissions deadline. Merit scholarships range from $3,000 to full tuition and are renewed annually while a student is enrolled at the Museum School.

The Film/Animation area offers a range of courses that build critical, conceptual, and technical skills in production and post-production in all genres and gauges, including single-screen and multiple projection. Seminar courses examine film and animation’s history through contemporary thought, aesthetic and historical movements, and cultural practice.

Whether hand-processing celluloid, shooting with the Bolex or 24-frame Panasonic digital camera, editing on the Steenbecks or in the Avid suite, animating images frame-by-frame or projecting two screens side by side, you will work with both traditional and cutting-edge processes. We encourage individual projects, and advanced students are encouraged to finish on to film, enabled by our Oxberry animation stand, JK optical printer, matchback capabilities in digital post, and the 16mm developer and contact printer. You also have the option to produce digitally in Final Cut Pro, Pro Tools, Avid, and Flash in our individual and group edit suites.

Screenings and visiting artists and critics are a regular part of the semester, providing exposure to a wide variety of contemporary, personal, and experimental works.