• "The promise of community, networks, curators and gallerists attending thesis shows, and students being picked up by gallerists as soon as they graduate is all well, but the MFA program is then modeling itself on a service and client model, aiding capitalist structures when the point of practicing art is to be able to have a critical distance from these structures that we are steeped in."
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    The art market exists, we are all well aware of it. Capitalism exists we are all aware of it. Artists wish to be successful, and support themselves through their work. This desire is present in most of us, but what success means and how we choose to use our skills and sensibilities to make a living are very nuanced and individual choices.

    I would mistrust any MFA program that fashioned itself to the art market, or claimed to be able to make good cultural producers out of its student body in the 1 or 2 years that most programs run. The promise of community, networks, curators and gallerists attending thesis shows, and students being picked up by gallerists as soon as they graduate is all well, but the MFA program is than modeling itself on a service and client model, aiding capitalist structures when the point of practicing art is to be able to have a critical distance from these structures that we are steeped in.

  • An MFA program should encourage critical thinking, foster a sense of community amongst its student and faculty, emphasize rigor and practice and an engagement with the world. It is the time and space that artists carve out to figure out what kind of artists and human beings they wish to be, that is a large enough expectation from an art education, and I think students would benefit from an MFA program that could do just this.