• "Schools are not, do not, and should not claim to be business schools or networking conventions. I don't feel that it's the primary responsibility of the program to create lofty art world connections for the students, but rather I think this should happen organically through and around the program."
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    Firstly, I just want to say one thing in regards to affordable education and that is that student loans should be an investment in the nations future, not a way to raise revenue.

    Now in terms of MFA programs specifically. I feel as if nobody really questions the need to attend an MFA program any more, we just know we have to get into the best one we can. Most professors and fellow students discuss or at least mention graduate schools your first year of college. So whether you are in an undergraduate program looking to graduate school or in a graduate school looking toward a job, I guess the question becomes: are we getting the most out of our education while in it?

    I left undergrad still with many questions about what I was doing, why I was doing

  • it and just as importantly wanting to know how to do some of the things I had going on in my head. For these reasons I decided to attend the Sculpture Department at the Rhode Island School of Design. It wasn’t until I went through the program at RISD that I realized how heavily steeped in making my practice was.

    Most students, not unlike myself, look toward MFA programs for some sort of validation for their practice and/ or career in the art world. There is a willingness on the student’s part to test their confidence in what they are producing either by reaffirming their intentions or breaking them entirely. And it was through my interactions with other departments and students that I actually began to construct the walls around what I considered to be my practice. It was like I was drawing a line in the sand, and I liked it. In my MFA program you were allowed to take classes in other departments, but unfortunately it wasn’t strongly encouraged. However, seeing and experiencing how others worked in digital media, printmaking, ceramics, glass, painting, and furniture design allowed me to concretize what I felt was most important to my own work. I started to understand the significance of what design and making meant to my colleagues, and inversely I began to formulate what these methods, histories and ideas did or did not mean for me.

    “I’ve never met a kid that said when they grow up they want to be a critic”
    -Joel Schumacher.

    In terms of an MFA programs relationship to the art market, we have to remind ourselves that these schools are not, do not, and should not claim to be business schools or networking conventions. I don't feel that it's the primary responsibility of the program to create lofty art world connections for the students, but rather I think

    this should happen organically through and around the program. If an MFA program loses sight of what I think it’s primary function should be, offering a space and time in which to aid, encourage, and help solidify an artist’s work, then more and more they will be seen as simply institutions that carry a pre-ranked weight for your resume, nothing more and nothing less.

    If a program becomes focused on the type and number of gallerists and collectors that grace the floors of the student’s studios, too early on, then it’s no longer concerned with creating an honest environment that fosters experimentation, sidestepping, and development. If MFA programs become just networking clubs, then is the student just buying connections? If so, then what becomes the real value of these programs? Like my colleague Bayne says, “sure, the art world is a country club of sorts, but introducing a slew of gallerists and collectors into a graduate program should be avoided as long as possible.”

    RISD does an amazing job offering important and culturally significant Grad Studies Grants and Fulbright Scholarship workshops, for which RISD students are consistently awarded many, and in an MFA program I think these sorts of opportunities should be championed over immediate gallery attention and art sales.

    Imagine what it would be like if MFA programs were contracts that stated you were unable to exhibit your work, attend a residency, work anywhere else, etc during the entirety of your graduate education, in other words no distractions. Ok, maybe this is extreme, but the point being, why enter into an MFA program if your not going to take full advantage of the time, people and experiences that already exist within this place. To some degree, I think the success of a graduate program should be ranked in terms of its indirect influence on the students, rather than a direct one. In

  • other words, not by the opportunities, gallerists, or sales received directly out of or by the school, but by those achieved years later. This becomes more a validation on the substance and impact of the program, rather than its ability to introduce the students to the art market.