MFA Art Practice at the School of Visual Arts

The art world is not a market. It's a conversation.

The Program

The Art Practice program offers a fully interdisciplinary approach to an MFA degree. We approach artmaking holistically: artists in the program are not defined or separated by medium or discipline. We view process as a kind of critical thinking.

Artists in the program engage in research-based practices, and are encouraged to converse and collaborate across subject matters using a combination of traditional and non-traditional media, technologies and techniques. We aim to create a global community of artists and cultural producers who look beyond a consensus driven approach to how we define what’s important in contemporary art.

To that end, a carefully selected, small group of MFA candidates come together at SVA’s NYC campus for three successive, intensive summer residency periods where they have the opportunity to work closely with artists, designers, writers, critics and curators. Guests in 2017 included Roberta Smith, Martha Rosler, Shaun Leonardo, William Powhida, Andrea Fraser, John Cohen, Brainard Carey, Emma Sulkowicz, Kalia Brooks, Oliver Herring, Mark Dion, J. Morgan Puett, Kalup Linzy, Mike Perry, Jay Sanders, Fred Tomaselli, Alexis Clements and Antoine Catala.

Current and recent mentors for the program include Baseera Khan, FAILE, Tony Oursler, Anton Ginzburg, Kimsooja, Dawn Dedeaux, Ben Davis, Melissa McGill, Suzanne Joelson, Mel Chin, Alice Aycock, Wang Qingsong and Sara Jimenez.

Facilities include a digital sculpture center, a bio-art lab and video and sound editing facilities in addition to a wood shop, metals shop, ceramics studio and fibers lab. In the intervening fall and spring semesters, participants engage in required, rich-media online coursework from all over the world.

Apply

We are still accepting applications for Summer 2019 on a rolling basis. The application can be found here.

Program Dates

The Summer 2019 session of the MFA Art Practice program runs from June 12 to July 30.

Get Info

David A. Ross on SVA MFA Art Practice

Brainard Carey

SVA MFA Art Practice presents Brainard Carey.

Brainard Carey is a New York City and New Haven based conceptual artist and author. Praxis, his collaborative with his wife, Delia Carey, has been included in the Whitney Biennial, Slovenian Biennial and the Museum of Modern Art, among others. His educational business, Praxis Center for Aesthetics, helps artists to write grants, exhibit, and advance their careers. He also interviews artists, curators, writers and architects for his ongoing Yale University radio series, The Lives of the Artists, Architects, Curators and more.

John Cohen

SVA MFA Art Practice presents John Cohen.

John Cohen is a musician, musicologist, photographer and filmmaker. His steadfast campaign for the recognition of traditional roots/folk music has led to the production of fifteen films, hundreds of photographs, and numerous sound recordings. He has also released more than twenty albums with the New Lost City Ramblers, published eight photo books with Steidl, and is the author of countless articles, liner notes, and interviews. From the late 1950s he was involved with the emerging art world in NYC, photographing Robert Frank’s production of Pull My Daisy (1959), and documenting the emergence of Pop Art and the heyday of Cedar Bar, the central hangout of the Abstract Expressionist painters.

The Artist as Activist

SVA Art Practice present The Artist as Activist, a panel discussion with Ben Davis, William Powhida, Shaun Leonardo and Daniel Tucker.

Ben Davis is the author of 9.5 Theses on Art and Class. He is currently National Art Critic for artnet News, and was formerly executive editor of Artinfo.com. His writings have appeared in Adbusters, The Brooklyn Rail, e-Flux Journal, Frieze, New York, The New York Times, Slate.com, The Village Voice, and many other venues.

William Powhida is a multi-disciplinary artist whose work critiques the contemporary art world. He is also a founding mem-ber of Placeholder, a group working towards establishing long-term, rent stabilized studios in New York. Currently he is represented in New York by Postmasters Gallery, in Seattle by Platform Gallery, in Los Angeles by Charlie James Gallery, and in Copenhagen by Gallery Poulsen. His work is in the collections of the Whitney Museum and the Orange County Museum of Art.

Shaun Leonardo is a Brooklyn-based artist from Queens, New York City. He uses modes of self-portraiture as a means to convey the complexities of masculine identity and question preconceived notions of manhood. His work has been presented in galleries and institutions, nationally and internationally, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and 8th Floor Gallery. Leonardo’s current collaborative work Mirror / Echo / Tilt is funded by Creative Capital.

Daniel Tucker works as an artist, writer and organizer developing documentaries, publications, exhibitions and events inspired by his interest in social movements and the people and places from which they emerge. His writings and lectures on the intersections of art and politics and his collaborative art projects have been published and presented widely.

Roberta Smith

Martha Rosler

Dread Scott and Ron English

Holland Cotter

Holland Cotter is an art critic for the NY Times. In 2009 he won a Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. In its citation, the Pulitzer committee said it was honoring Mr. Cotter, who has been a sta critic at The Times since 1998, for “his wide ranging reviews of art, from Manhattan to China, marked by acute observation, luminous writing and dramatic storytelling.”

Tom Sachs

Jerry Saltz

Jeff Chang

Carolee Schneemann

Jeanne Silverthorne

Anthony Hawley

Carrie Mae Weems

Alexandra Hammond

Yvonne Rainer

Angela Conant + Kate Harding with Thyrza Nichols Goodeve

Chrissie Iles

Chrissie Iles (2016)

Chrissie Iles is the Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. Her exhibitions include co-curating the 2004 and 2006 Whitney Biennials, and curating major survey exhibitions of Marina Abramovic, Dan Graham, Louise Bourgeois, Sol LeWitt, Donald Judd, and Yoko Ono, as well as exhibitions of Paul McCarthy, James Lee Byars, Jack Goldstein, and several group exhibitions including Signs of the Times: Film, Video and Slide Installation and Britain in the 1980s, Scream and Scream Again: Film in Art, and Into the Light: The Projected Image in American Art 1964-1977.

Robin Winters

Cecilia Vicuña

Vito Acconci

Panel Discussion: Art and Alternative Economies

The School of Visual Arts MFA Art Practice program presents a panel discussion with artists whose work in some way deals with alternative economic systems. Panelists include:

Arlen Austin and Jason Boughton (H.E.N.S.)
Jen Abrams
Meredith Degyansky

Moderated by Ben Davis

Summer 2014

Izhar Patkin

Vito Acconci in Conversation with David A. Ross

Dara Birnbaum in Conversation with David Ross

Chrissie Iles

Chrissie Iles (2014)

Robert C. Morgan

Thyrza Nichols Goodeve in Conversation with The Brothers Quay

Michael Severance

Current Practice

Blog

Your 2019 AP @ CAA Schedule

The 2019 College Art Association Conference is on, and several Alumni and faculty are presenting. Here’s where to find them. If you haven’t registered for the conference, don’t worry! CAA offers on-site pay-what-you-want day passes.

Angela Conant and Sarah G. Sharp at the ICA Baltimore

Angela Conant (AP ‘13) and Sarah G. Sharp (AP Faculty) are showing work in the 2019 Flat Files Exhibition at the ICA Baltimore.

Jason Mena at the Portland Museum of Art

Jason Mena (AP ‘19) presents work in the group show “Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago” at the Portland Museum of Art.

The AP Questionnaire: Eleanor Kipping

MFA Art Practice welcomes 2019 Artist in Residence Eleanor Kipping! Eleanor is a socially engaged artist and educator working to increase dialogue, understanding, and healing surrounding U.S. race relations and history. To get to know her, we asked her to complete the AP Questionnaire.

Ernesto Pujol in the Brooklyn Rail

Ernesto Pujol (AP Faculty) reflects on his recent performance, The Listeners in the Brooklyn Rail. He has also contributed the introductory text to Current Landscape: Walking Across Puerto Rico.

Johan Grimonprez at Kristof de Clercq Gallery

AP faculty member Johan Grimonprez presents “Every Day Words Disappear” at Kristof de Clercq Gallery in Belgium.

Brenda Perry-Herrera at Praxis Gallery

Brenda Perry-Herrera (AP ‘14) presents Omnipresence at Praxis Gallery in New York, opening tonight!

Read Between the Lines: Artist Talk with Heather Williams at the Afro American Historical and Cultural Society Museum

Heather Williams (AP ‘20) gives an artist talk at the Afro American Historical and Cultural Society Museum in Jersey City.

Tomorrow! AP Alum invade Connecticut in SOUR MILK

AP alumni Ben Quesnel and Christine Stiver (‘17) have created the first annual SOUR MILK Art Exhibition, staged for one day only in an unoccupied house in Greenwich, Connecticut. Among the artists in the show are fellow alumni Alexandra Hammond (‘15), Huiqi He (‘18), Tzirel Kaminetzky (‘17), JD Raenbeau (‘15) and faculty/staff member Jacquelyn Strycker.

Jason Mena in Miami and Nebraska

Jason Mena (AP ‘19) is included in “Relational Undercurrents: Contemporary Art of the Caribbean Archipelago,” at the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum FIU in Miami, Florida, and in "Between One & Zero,” at the Architectural Hall of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

TANGA! in Art in Odd Places

TANGA!, a collective made up of AP alumni Alfredo Travieso, Rachel Chick and Andrew Prieto (AP ‘14) are participating in Art in Odd Places: Body. They’ll present their TRANSFORMATIONAL AESTHETICS project as part of AiOP’s public festival, October 11-14.