Many art schools are engaged in a national debate on how best to educate emerging artists. Many have devised programs that take certain positions relative to current innovations in the field, or in anticipation of future trends.
At the University of Houston School of Art, we reframed that discussion by focusing not on the contextual fields of practice, but rather on you – the practitioner. You are the only stable and absolutely central component in the equation. The only question worth asking is not how you might fit into our program, but rather how we might fit into yours. This question needs asking of each student who enters our MFA program, and each answer will necessarily be as unique as each individual.
The way we fit into “your program” is by creating the mechanisms to hybridize research; by maintaining an institutional agility; by devising programs that are flexible and dynamic; and by creating the environments that help you to broaden and deepen your investigations.
At the UH School of Art, we have solid MFA concentrations in Painting, Sculpture, Photography/Digital Media, and Graphic Communications. We are adding an MFA concentration in Interdisciplinary Practice and Emerging Forms (anticipated Fall 09). Built into each of these concentrations is the ability to extend outward and into the vast resources of a premier research institution. Our MFA program integrates the university and the city of Houston as an extended classroom, in a fundamentally multidisciplinary platform.
Freedom, flexibility and intensive studio practice is supported by a rigorously intellectual environment that recognizes that artists working within the tradition of painting or at the frontier of emerging media need the intellectual, theoretical, conceptual and analytical tools to contextualize their production within larger social contexts.
Critical Studies programs provide a structure for that inquiry. Raphael Rubinstein joins our faculty this year as Professor of Critical Studies, crafting a program that will bridge theory and practice, and function as a conceptual center for contemporary art discourse within the School of Art.
Our outstanding faculty and extensive visiting artist/critic program is supported by a vast expansion of scholarship through our faculty affiliate network. Colleagues from across the University will mentor our graduate students with research interests that extend outside of the atelier and into fields as diverse as biology and physics. And our School is deeply embedded in Houston’s dynamic and established visual arts community – artists, designers, curators, and other professionals provide our students with expertise and a range of unique opportunities. We are rich in human assets.
We are not only looking for candidates who fit neatly within a particular discipline or on a linear academic trajectory. We are looking for students who may be returning to an academic environment after time away. We are looking for students whose undergraduate study was not in the visual arts, or whose work is in transition, or not easily classified. We are looking for students whose practice is idea and project based, and is expressed in forms that necessarily vary.
We are looking for MFA candidates who are highly self-motivated, and would be well served by a program that encourages exploration and risk supported by an innovative curriculum, a critical environment, generous facilities, a renowned faculty, and a world-class city.