SocialKonstruct

Good luck with your Zoom interviews!

Indeed. You said this very brilliantly and accurately. A lot of the MFA programs in the LA/NYC are able to get the curators, other artists, and critics through the studios physically. It is geography there. Two of the prime exceptions are RISD and Yale which are not in big cities but close by. Another factor is the level of challenge and incorporation of critical theory into the program. The very top schools are going to have very tough readings and I meant you have to be at the top of your game to know what the hell (or fuck) you are reading. Want an example of readings for a top notch MFA? Here is a sample at Calarts of what you are required to read: Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”. In: Illuminations. Hito Steyerl, “In Defense of the Poor Image”. In: The Wretched of the Screen. Rosalind Krauss, “The Originality of the Avant-Garde: A Postmodernist Repetition”. In: The Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. or Richard Shusterman, Self-styling after the end of Art and Self as Art Luciano Floridi, The Informational Nature of Personal Identity These are not just easy texts to gloss over or skim. You will have to be at the top of your game to understand these oft difficult critical texts as well. And these so-called elitist MFA programs are teaching artists to be critical problem solvers and not just folks who pump out artworks without any context. Plus you are going to be networking consistently with those who are tied to the NYC/LA museum systems as well. The point is as an incoming MFA student you have choices. You can do whatever you wish whether teach, enter a huge gallery, or just work in a studio at a local gallery. But consistently a lot of folks want to apply to the top ranked programs and there is a huge reason for that. This pattern is not accidental.

Good luck on your USC interview woot woot! My prayers be with you :).

Now you got my ears perked up because I was seriously looking at UIC for Laura Letinsky and him specifically... Going to definitely PM you about this because this would be huge for my decision here. Thanks for the scoop.

Thanks. Honestly not interested at all in self-promotion. Just trying to chill, make friends here, maybe help whatever I can, occasionally gossip, and learn more about what the MFA process is going to be like. I plan as a conceptual artist to make my MFA journey into a work of art which is going to be very interesting. Not sure what the results will be. Maybe risky? I don't want to do into more debt over a MFA (as I still owe a lotta money from my previous degree) but I do want to make friends and still have a modicum of success in the contemporary art world. I am not suggesting everyone follow what I do because it's an individual thing. Maybe I will put a huge disclaimer on whatever I post here. Take me with a huge grain of salt. Just one artist in a pond of fish here

I still want a single payer healthcare system and tried to work on that at Yale in 1999-2001. And nothing has changed at all but gotten worse as our health care system is more capitalist than ever. The major change is that I became a neo-Marxist and anti-neoliberal capitalist over the years. Public health officials are now being treated as criminals- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/17/florida-rebekah-jones-covid-data-analyst-arrest-warrant Now public health has become about supporting the fat cats of hospitals and drug companies. I walked away from my public health experience completely in 2008. Very grateful. My dream job is just to be an artist and curator now.

I ended up switching to visual arts after 20 years in the public health and computer software fields. I learned that my idealism was tempered by the destructive politics which has gotten worse today. My happiness is much better now that I can do photography and sculpture as much as I can. Plus help run a gallery here in SLC too.

The financial thing is weighing on my mind too. I am debating whether to add more school loans on top of the loans I already have :\. Plus the world can change very quickly by 2023 too.

I agree. My art practice right now in my BFA photography program has shifted a lot already. When I started school two years ago I wanted to be a photojournalist but now I am interested in social practice and conceptually constructed photography and sculpture. Theaster Gates is pretty awesome and I look to his example of how to conduct an ethical and thoughtful studio practice. Already he is helping out Chicago better and faster than the local politicians there who argue over how to reconstruct Chicago cultural centers.

That's awesome! I like a cooperative and healthy environment to foster art making :). Exploration and social practice are great :).

Don't quote me with this but I heard that even once or twice there was a fist fight between two artists and it didn't go very well. I gather I have learned not to be emotionally involved with my art practice at all. If folks dislike my art, I just shrug it off and move on and listen to good advice. I am not a crowd pleaser.

I wouldn't be able to do a comparison but I can try to ask my Columbia MFA friends (who graduated from there) and that our gallery represents about Columbia's paintings... Also I know is that articles have alluded to the Pit Crit being a pretty intellectual and emotionally fraught type of situation. (https://i-d.vice.com/en_us/article/bj3jvz/this-is-what-its-like-to-get-a-yale-school-of-art-mfa-degree and https://artillerymag.com/24755/ "At the Yale School of Painting and Printmaking there is a pit. They called it a pit. There were discussions in the pit and they were twice a year, about you, and mandatory. Some people cried in the pit. They wept because the artist-professors said they held low opinions of the art they had made and—not infrequently, and not only by implication, of them as people—of their intelligence, bravery, craft and work ethic. Since the entire school was watching, along with dozens of students from sculpture and photo, this was very public weeping. Most did not weep. One student drank heavily the whole time, one told me to play “Get Off Of My Cloud” if it got bad, one painted the most famous teacher being raped by animals and showed it to him, one never had a good crit and is magnificently well off. It was considered important to have allies when you went into the pit. You would invite your friends—but they weren’t allowed to talk. The professors would talk, and you would talk and you were always outnumbered. It is no accident that of the three art schools at Yale it was the School of Painting—the most primitive—that enacted the end-of-term critique in its most theatrical, least merciful, and purest form. There are no skills regularly taught in modern art schools—the Pit Crit and its cousins in schools all over the world are the primary ritual of the modern academy: place the artist in the center of a concentric circle whose outermost ring is whatever they felt like making and whose middle ring is their elders, and tell them that they suck." --Zak Smith

If you want intense critiquing environment, that I wouldn't know. I just know that the folks hang out a ton outside of classes and do stuff together. But if you are looking for the legendary pit crit brutality of the Yale program, Pratt is the opposite from what I gather through the grapevine.

Actually one of our old classmates is right there for Pratt paintings. And she loves it! It's a fairly laid back program with lots of wonderful people who are supportive. And yes, a few of them do make it in the NYC art world too. I also would love more information about the classes there as well as about the environs which I could not find in the website. https://www.amyungrichtart.com/

Yeah, sorry I don't know Chinese very well. I do speak a lot more French! ? LoL :). I'm also trying to learn Arabic

I don't know whether pay-to-play is necessarily the case all the time here. Having taken multiple classes at SVA since last summer, I found the classes (of which I plan to take a lot more) here to be very insightful and utterly helpful. Apart from a few courses at the University of Utah art department, I found the challenges and critical help through SVA as well as the networking to be invaluable within my own art practice. Plus I don't have really any Utah art friends here except maybe two or three and all of my RL friends in the art world were made through SVA. Here is an example of our networking- https://ifounducollective.com/

I would like some actual stats. What is the economic status of the families whose children attend top notch art MFA programs in the United States? I couldn't find anything on this topic.

China isn't completely horrid but it is a country fraught with many issues, particularly with internet censorship and detention camps- https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55794071. That's the huge issue with late stage capitalism throughout the world. It's pretty much the parallel issues as in the United States (stares at the immigrant detainee camps). I have no pride in Western culture ? and to be honest, I don't believe in patriotism at all. And yes, the economic system here has no qualms earning money form the Chinese market in order to thrive. To keep on topic however, Chinese contemporary art is pretty much growing and there is a large number of talented folks from there. One of my favorite photographers lately has been- https://www.artnews.com/art-in-america/features/chinese-photographer-ronghui-chen-displacement-1202691136/ who has been documenting the polarities within Chinese society atm.

I heard that NYU Steinhardt is pretty different from Parsons... I would love to hear about Pratt (we have a few folks from the U of U there atm).

I agree with that but it has to be a two way street as well. Students have a responsibilities to keep in touch with professors and vice versa. Granted there are some programs where that was an issue (stares at Columbia from a few years ago) due to professors focusing on art careers. But it's a trade-off. Star faculty doesn't mean that the experience would be worth it. But in the art world, more often than not the name of the institution does count for something. Your general art gallerist isn't a curator or art critic. They are going to see where you went to and say wow. It's a business foremost. And I have seen that way too often in the contemporary art world where gallerists are rarely involved in art critical theory.

I would rather that my tuition go towards making that the facility is top notch rather than having amenities tbh. Not much use having endless free coffee if I am not making the proper connections into the art world.

Also despite the Trump dictatorial era, we don't have extensive internet censorship here... so the freedom to explore all types of subjects is liberating too. Indeed... however despite the appeal of having a diverse cohort, one must be careful to remember that we have to not tolerate intolerance which is becoming huge in our culture today.

Also the growing ascendancy of China is quite evident in the art auction and collectors market during the pandemic era. Art fairs are flourishing in China as well. Napoleon was correct about China being the sleeping tiger which awakens and this is very true in today's contemporary art field.

My experience with the SVA residency has been pretty positive but then again you have to hustle to make it in the art world. I suspect a lot of art MFA students desire to have things handed to them on a silver platter and we want fancy studios etc. etc. I have zero interest in privilege whenever I go to my MFA program. My idea is that I should be able to make art on the run. Art while being homeless. Art while being happy. Art while in a residency (and some residencies are even more barebones than a cubicle)... Art while being in an airplane. I think often we are used to having an art education based on the fact that we are afforded the tools given by professors. One has to hustle to make the connections, to take the initative to meet up with professors (they will not come over to you), to be an occasional enterprising soul out there. This is the stark reality I am facing as I am working and founding a curatorial space here in Salt Lake City. I do not get any support from the local Utah community (apart from a few nods) and I have learned to help others thrive (as a curator) and still have a viable art practice with the minimal amount of funding and resources possible. Maybe I am cynical but dealing with the stark support system for the visual arts in the USA this is more commonplace than ever. Maybe SVA seems like a pretty stark place but I have seen quite a few folks do rather well from their BFA program (my gallery represents a few graduates from there) as well as their MFA program.

I am a photography BFA major and you can see my work at www.albertabdulbarrwang.art. But I am also very conceptually driven and not commercial at all in my interests (keeping in line with my neo-Marxist beliefs).