Program Description

The UD/ART 2-year M.F.A. program consists of around twenty students who work together in an intimate environment with faculty and grads from all concentrations and conceptual positions. Our graduate students have excellent on-campus studios and 24-hour access to state-of-the-art facilities. Studio resources and undergraduate programs include painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and photography.

The University's centralized location on the eastern corridor of the United States makes it an ideal location to study visual art. Situated midway between Philadelphia and Baltimore, the campus is about two hours by train/car north to New York City, or south to Washington, D.C.

For more information, we invite you to read through the UD/ART MFA Handbook.

Program Philosophy

To make important art is an automatically expansive process. It is a momentum and an action, disregarding traditional boundaries in favor of ideas and actualizations. The Department of Art and Design at the University of Delaware realizes that the contemporary artist benefits from a thorough investigation of their own practice as well as wide-ranging feedback from others, and we strive to create an environment that encourages these conditions.

Our program is divided among research, practice, and discourse. Students are asked to take academic classes to encourage them to develop a language with which to discuss what they are doing; they are asked to keep up a dedicated studio practice where they are pushed to fully engage their interests; and they come together with this language and studio work for regularly scheduled critiques. The M.F.A. program hosts a diverse faculty capable of responding to a range of work in a variety of conditions, and we foster a communal teaching model where students will dialogue with professionals and other graduate students outside of their perceived "field." Our curriculum allows for both radical experimentation and a devoted effort to a unique vision.

We work to develop thoughtful, articulate artists through an M.F.A. program housed within a diverse University. We consider the University setting to be an ideal territory for the development of intellectually strong and challenging works of art, and we encourage our students to take advantage of the broad range of ideas being discussed outside of the arts. At the same time, the intimate size of our program allows for the graduate faculty to engage with students on an individual level, and to nourish work that comes out of a personal vision rather than any overarching philosophy of what art should be.