Studio - School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Studio from School of the Art Institute of Chicago is a Campus Master Fine Art degree that prepares you for a Art and Design career. The cornerstone of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago 's [SAIC] graduate studio program is its focus on tutorially guided studio practice. Each semester, MFA students select from more than 100 graduate faculty advisors in SAIC representing myriad disciplines, approaches, and intellectual positions. As the main component of their studies, MFA 6009: Graduate Projects allows students to develop their work with faculty who guide them through an informed dialogue around content, form, theory, and professional practice. Students enter the MFA in Studio program through a specific department but have access to the breadth and richness of all the studio and academic faculty and facilities at SAIC. Students can elect to work with advisors from their department or, through the uniquely open nature of the curriculum, may choose faculty with expertise in other media, disciplines, or critical dialogues. Ultimately, it is the student's inherent work that drives the choice of advisor, and both disciplinary and interdisciplinary work is supported and advanced. Faculty from the academic programs in art history, arts administration and policy, art education, and visual and critical studies also serve as graduate advisors, providing yet another expertise in support of SAIC Graduate Projects. The MFA in Studio program is dedicated to the exploration of ideas through the process of making in visual, written, and aural form. The program encourages experimentation, play, and an avant-garde practice, both in and out of the studio. Graduate-level courses and topical seminars support the individual studio work, by exposing students to the larger dialogues around the production, exhibition, and function of art, architecture, and design. Rigorous art history, theory, and criticism classes, required during the course of study, further provide students with historic and contemporary models of making and thinking. Specific seminars in contemporary, thematic, or critical issues of a particular medium can augment studio work, as can interdisciplinary seminars that bring SAIC faculty and students from all areas together to address the meta-issues of contemporary art and culture. Interdisciplinary seminars also allow students to show and discuss their work with faculty and students from across the studio areas, as well as from other graduate programs. The resulting exchanges allow MFA students to view and critique a wide variety of art and the many generative approaches to studio practice, and to become fluent in discussing their own work with peers both in and out of their particular fields. As one of the principle means of assessment each semester, Critique Week, a week-long schedule of critiques during which classes are suspended, involves the entire faculty and invited visiting artists and designers assembled into panels that conduct intensive studio critiques with all studio and writing graduate students. In the fall, critiques are organized by department with panels representing the discipline, and in the spring, critiques are all interdisciplinary, with panel members and students from across SAIC disciplines. The first semester provides departments with an opportunity to evaluate their constituency, to review the work from a disciplinary point of view, and to reiterate the expectations for graduate study. Interdisciplinary critiques in the spring semesters allow for a broader range of responses to the work, and are intended to assess the success of the work for a more general , albeit highly informed audience. Critique panels include faculty, visiting artists, and the peer review of fellow graduate students. Studio critiques are required of every full-time graduate student pursuing an MFA in Studio or Writing degree . Typically, an SAIC graduate student will have had at least four critique panels throughout their studies at SAIC augmenting the biweekly tutorial with their graduate advisors. At the conclusion of their studies, graduate students present work in the SAIC Graduate Thesis Exhibition, other end-of-year events at SAIC, the Gene Siskel Film Center, or in Collected, an annually published journal featuring the work of graduating writing students. Each year more than 200 graduate students exhibit work, screen videos and films, and present time-based works, writings, and performance to a collective audience of 30,000. Students are required either to participate in the annual Graduate Thesis Exhibition or event at the conclusion of their studies, or to arrange with the graduate dean or division chair for an alternative thesis of equal professional quality. A juried and curated section of the SAIC Graduate Thesis Exhibition is an option for all students wishing to install work around prevalent themes, strategies or stylistic affinities. A faculty and staff committee conducts extensive studio visits, and as a collaborative project with the student participants, organizes and installs the show in designated space at the exhibition. In general, SAIC's MFA in Studio program is designed for advanced students sharpening their technical and theoretical skills, and deepening their engagement with the issues of their day. With SAIC's pluralism of forms and ideas, students learn the complexities of process, expression, and representation. They are exposed to what's happening in the world of art and design, and they gain valuable self-assessment skills to sustain themselves in their careers. The MFA program is versatile, accommodating the many models of being an artist, designer, or scholar today, and supporting further invention around what this may mean in the future. Moving students ?beyond ability? toward something even more daring, meaningful, and impactful is the focus of our studies. View more details on School of the Art Institute of Chicago . Ask your questions and apply online for this program or find other related Fine Art courses.