Visual Arts, M.F.A.

(60 credits)

Program Description

The low-residency Visual Arts program at the Institute of Art and Design at New England College challenges and supports students in developing their art both technically and conceptually. Each area of study is constructed with the aim for the student to either immerse themselves in a specific discipline or to explore a range of different creative avenues. Incorporating both studio practice and critical theory, the primary concern of the MFA Visual Arts program is that the student develops a critical awareness of their work to better understand the current social, intellectual and aesthetic conditions that informs their individual creative practice, and effectively situate it within a contemporary context.

Areas of Study

1. Drawing/Painting/Printmaking
2. Photography/Time Based Art
3. Sculptural Practices/Installation Practices/Ceramics

Learning Outcomes

Graduate students in Visual Art will:

• Produce original and influential work that is rigorous, conceptual and tailored to the 21st century creative discourse.
• Apply technical skills as appropriate to a student’s medium, subject, and conceptual concerns. To this end, demonstrate committed, disciplined studio practice and full engagement in the intentional formal presentation of one’s creative work, as relevant to the discipline.
• Demonstrate an ability to actively and fully engage in individual and group discussions, including thoughtful participation, intentional listening, and receptiveness to constructive dialog and critique.
• Demonstrate an understanding of creative work relative to historical and contemporary practice and demonstrate an awareness that the work exists within a broader social context.
• Develop an inventive, individualized, flexible, and entrepreneurial plan for maintaining a sustained practice.
• Participate in cross-disciplinary discourse and practices, engage fully with structured programming as well as with alternative sites and communities, and engage with concepts and entities outside of the immediate artistic and academic boundaries of a specific discipline.
• Demonstrate an awareness of the artist’s role as one of local and global citizen. Social and global awareness includes an understanding that power structures operate through all forms of communication-in the creation of meaning and therefore in the making and interpretation of works.
• Establish an aptitude for the communication of ideas through multiple modes of expression, and the intentional consideration of audience. Aptitude includes formal skill as well as an articulation of one’s own ideas and creative work as subjective. Communication will demonstrate an ongoing awareness of and consideration for social and cultural contexts.
• Actively consider and respond to issues around appropriation, influence, and source material through one’s creative and professional practice. In all academic and creative work, all appropriated words, images, and ideas of others will be fully and clearly identified.
• Engage in critical and creative thinking by demonstrating an ability to assess ideas, research, theories, and/or creative works presented by diverse thinkers and makers, synthesize multiple perspectives into a coherent understanding of a problem, issue, or question, and generate alternative responses, as demonstrated in the coherent presentation of a question, interpretation, or approach in multiple modes or forms.
• Demonstrate expanded formal and conceptual exploration, applying those connections to one’s own practice by drawing inspiration and/or differentiation from a wide range of formal strategies and ways of constructing meaning. 
• Reflect on behavior with an awareness of one’s ethical and social responsibility. This includes active, thoughtful participation in community and advocacy for one’s own health and wellness and that of others.  Students will demonstrate self-reliance, empathy, and social literacy in their personal, academic, and professional interactions.
• Utilize ethical scholarly practice in creative and academic work.