Push boundaries – starting with your own.
Through a studio-based curriculum, our MFA program emphasizes advanced interdisciplinary practice, creative collaboration, mentorships, and rigorous academic discourse. During this two-year program, you'll join a vibrant and supportive community committed to making art that shapes our global society and collective future.
A Master of Fine Arts from SMFA combines intensive studio arts training with the immersive liberal arts curriculum of a major research university. All MFA students take one graduate-level art history class and three liberal arts and sciences electives that are important to their thesis, studio practice, and artistic development.
As an MFA student, you'll develop your studio practice by contemplating your work across disciplines. You’ll work closely with faculty and staff to develop a personalized studio curriculum, and will have access to resources across Tufts.
MFA students also take part in seminars that explore a variety of subjects within contemporary art. Seminars provide intensive individual guidance, mentoring, and a combination of individual and group critique. You'll advance your presentation, research, and art-making skills, and position yourself for a long and productive independent art practice.
At SMFA, each area of study is a chance to immerse yourself in a specific discipline, or explore a range of different creative modes. Areas of study are how you'll deepen and expand your practice while exploring what it will take for you to realize your vision. You'll build an individualized set of skills and experiences that carry with you into your professional career.
In addition to building upon your artistic skills, learning new techniques and further developing your art practice, your time at SMFA is also an opportunity to further your professional development. You can take full advantage of countless student exhibition opportunities, visiting artists, and the resources of our Career Center.
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The MFA program culminates in a self-curated final exhibition where you consider the broad implications of your practice and the questions that your work seeks to answer. You'll also write a thesis that articulates the process, research, and intention that anchors your work, and defend it before a committee of faculty and a visiting juror. Both the thesis and the exhibition are significant achievements and a celebration of your evolution as an artist. They demonstrate that you are ready to succeed as a working professional artist, whatever form your career might take.
The Graduate Colloquium is a forum for graduate students, faculty, and invited professional artists to discuss diverse and current topics in visual art and art theory. Colloquia are conceived, proposed, and coordinated by faculty, gallery curators, advisors, and MFA students. The Graduate Steering Committee reviews and selects proposals. These all-day events take place at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and are open to the public.
As an MFA student at SMFA you will have the opportunity to apply for the Hamburg Exchange Program and the Montague Travel Grant. Through these programs, our students travel internationally prior to the completion of their degree.
