Sculpture Boston University

Overview

The Sculpture program at Boston University interweaves the significant demands of creative production, intellectual and theoretical inquiry, and critical engagement with cultural history and contemporary art discourse. It offers expansive dialogue with peers, faculty, and distinguished visitors. It challenges students to embrace creative risk, to productively engage with difference through dialogue and collaboration, to accelerate and intensify the relationship with their own work, and to participate in cultivating an expanded vision for the future of art.

Key facts

The MFA curriculum is designed to promote generative conversations between positions of creative difference, allowing for stimulating cross-disciplinary exchange and activity with emphasis on a balance of art production, art theory, and critical inquiry. At the core of this two-year program is a studio culture that is collaboratively formed by an intimate cohort of student artists whose cultural backgrounds and creative practices are all highly distinctive, resulting in a dynamic, evolving learning environment. Our students’ work is characterized by its fluid movement between modes of art production, which include sculpture, installation, video, performance, image-making, text, and all that is possible across and between these genres.

Studio production, graduate seminar courses, and group discussions are central to the curriculum. In addition, students’ educational experiences are enriched by special programs and activities, such as the MFA film series, student-created events, and multiple field trips and site visits throughout the year. Students have unparalleled one-on-one contact with internationally renowned core faculty members, guest critics, writers, curators, and visiting artists. In addition to twenty-four-hour access to individual studios, a shared sculpture project room, and fabrication facilities, students are encouraged to explore the extraordinary range of academic opportunities and media production resources available to them within the broader Boston University context.

The city of Boston, with its rich history and diverse culture, provides another important resource for our program. Boston is home to world-class museums and contemporary institutions that attract internationally active artists, curators, and writers. The city hosts a thriving culture of talks and lectures, making the art-academic experience in Boston exceptionally vital.

Fundamental to the curriculum of graduate studies in Sculpture is a well-rounded studio practice with extensive exposure to a plurality of contemporary perspectives. Our program balances individual creative production with a wide range of curricular activities, such as: reading and research; topical seminar courses; critical analysis and interpretation of student work; collaborative projects; film screenings and discussions; and travel to galleries, museums, and cultural events within the Boston area and beyond. At the end of each semester, student work is reviewed by the core faculty and a guest critic from the field. At the end of the fourth semester, the graduating student mounts a public thesis exhibition in a professional gallery, where the work is reviewed by a thesis panel. The exhibition is accompanied by the MFA exhibition catalogue, which includes a written thesis statement by each MFA student.