michaelwebster

I would look for photographers who work in similar processes and see where they went on their CV. You might not find a whole department of professors who work in alt. processes, but what you need is at least one good professor.

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I didn't mean that you have to have exhibition experience, I was just trying to paint a picture of what experience an "average" MFA applicant has. Its true, exhibitions don't matter at all, the portfolio is really the thing that matters. Interdisciplinary knowledge is really important too, but I was getting a vibe that the original poster didn't really have a strong idea of what the art field is now, and applying to schools "blind" is tough. More specifc experience within the art field (classes, crits, internships, exhibitions, etc.) would result in a far more successful application process, as those kinds of experiences can push your work. I know I did tons of research for years and I still wish I would have made a few different choices on schools to apply to.

yes, you should be angry, and you should be sending emails to people further up the ladder (deans, provosts, etc.) about this if you don't get anything. I am curious how you were accepted and also on academic probation before even starting school?

Your most recent work looks more and more illustrative, not because its drawing, but because youre referencing more imagery from traditional fantasy genres and building more narratives. I still want to see you go back to more unusual substrates and incorporating other materials. I never thought your work looked illustrative before, but the most recent stuff does seem like illustration to me.

Yes, April 15th is the required date to accept an offer (assuming most offers have some financial support attached) at most grad schools, especially public ones. If they are on the council of graduate schools, they are supposed to abide by the April 15th deadline. Many private art schools aren't in the Council. http://www.cgsnet.org/april-15-resolution There is a list of member schools in the link here.

If you want to teach the most important factor is actual teaching expereince as an "instructor of record." If one school will give you that opportunity, that school will be a better choice. If school 1 only offers you TA posiitons but doesn't let you teach your own class, then you will not be able to teach until you have a really strong exhibiton history and experience, so that may likely be a decade down the road. If you want to exhibit in international biennials, then option 3 would give you a better jump start towards that, but if you want to exhibit more in metalsmithing and jewelry specific shows or juried exhibitions, etc, then option 1 would be the better choice, because the debt wouldn't hold you back as much. Small departments means lots of attention from faculty, but also means a smaller amount of connections and learning expereinces. If you are the only metalsmith in the program, as you previously mentioned, then you will not be able to trade techniques with other MFA students like you would if you had more metals colleagues.

It all depends on what you want. If you want to push yourself and learn the most you could from an MFA, then option 1 is not for you. If you don't want to take out a lot of loans and have to pay them back over years then option 3 is not for you. Option 2 is somewhere in between, but getting another fully funded MFA offer after the post bac would not necessarily happen. You haven't mentioned what you want to do with your degree, whether its making a living from selling your work internationally, on a more regional scope, teaching at some level, or working another job while making art part-time. All are valid, but they would result in different approaches to choosing a school.

Following up on dimensionsvariable, SAIC has the only performance art department in the country and from everything I have seen I would also say its a much better school all around. And I am not saying this just because I went there, I will point out the school's flaws as soon as anyone, but SAIC wins hands down in performance.

if funding is similar it should be an easy choice if you are interested in performance.

Bard has a strong curatorial studies program, and it doesn't hurt to possibly cross paths with many curators while in school. But if its all low res then maybe artists don't meet the curators often?

The Open: Man and Animal by Giorgio Agamben

I must keep skipping over the C, haha, well yes I meant abstraction.

I wasn't talking about going back to the evolution towards a universal aesthetics, I am well aware of art history (no need to be condescending), and I am not talking about aestheticisms. I am talking about art historians who have realized that the notion of art as a means of transgression, its attempts at freedom from external determination, and the remanants of avant-gardism place the struggle for pure abstration within the larger scope of modernism rather than define it. Groups such as the constructivists, dadaists, surrealists, and cubism's challenge to perspective are good examples of work that fits a tighter lineage with today's work than the part of modernism whose goal was pure abstration. Many art historians in the 70s-90s really highlighted that split as the difference between modernism and post-modernism, and now many good art historians (for example some I studied under at SAIC) are finding too many bridges across that split to keep believing in it. Too many previous art historians villified Modernism as being all about univeralist pure abstration when in reality that was only a part of modernism.

I love Conversation Pieces and The One and the Many by Grant Kester. Definitely about sincerety, empathy, honesty, and the ethical questions raised through art practice. In regards to the naming, most of the good art historians I have read have mostly abandoned post-modernism unless they leave it between scare quotes. Many have realized that art made in the 1960s-1980s was not the colossal shift that Greenberg and Fried made it out to be, and that we are still dealing with most of the same frameworks that artists were dealing with at the beginning of the 20th century. So instead of jumping on the trend bandwagon many are going back to using Modernism for our current time. Now I don't know about other fields, just what I have been noticing in art writing lately.