losemygrip

My advice:
 
If you want to study Manet, DO NOT go to a program with a famous Manet expert.  S/he will already know it all, and it will be hard for you to surface from beneath your advisor's research. 
 
Find a place (or person) that more generally suits your scholarly disposition instead.  (Theory-oriented; object-focused; social history; whatever)

In my opinion, this is horrible advice.  I disagree completely.  It's not that networking won't help your career.  But remember--Jesus never made it in Nazareth.  You'll be taken for granted if you've always been there.  If you're the fresh new face, you'll get more attention.

Wait . . . what?! This makes no sense. Why would completing an MA make you ineligible for further study as well as unemployable?

You don't need a bachelor's in art history to pursue graduate study. You have a related degree. You've now strengthened your transcript. So you're ready to apply for grad school in art history. You'll apply to a range of programs, from PhD to terminal MA, from unlikely to likely. And then you'll go wherever you get the best deal.

Case closed. No need to fret.

Wait . . . what?! This makes no sense. Why would completing an MA make you ineligible for further study as well as unemployable?

You don't need a bachelor's in art history to pursue graduate study. You have a related degree. You've now strengthened your transcript. So you're ready to apply for grad school in art history. You'll apply to a range of programs, from PhD to terminal MA, from unlikely to likely. And then you'll go wherever you get the best deal.

Case closed. No need to fret.

Your writing seems a little non-grammatical, so make sure not to do that in your applications.

Listen, if you guys were offended or hurt just because someone referred to some artwork as "dismal," then maybe you better look for another field. And you're certainly not ready for grad school. You'll hear a lot worse there, and it will be said to your face about your own work.

By the same token, the OP's subsequent rant was a bit of an overreaction as well, if you ask me.

It is, of course, my own opinion.  Obviously others will disagree.  However, unlike some people, when I disagree I don't run around drawing unwarranted conclusions and making unfounded statements about other posters who hold different opinions.
 
To elaborate: what I have primarily been thinking of is that Columbia grads are rarely seen in academe, which may be by their own choice.  However, in my experience they are also rarely seen outside of New York, where they are much more common.  Unlike many, I don't see New York gallery representation as the pinnacle of artistic achievement.  I believe that neither Columbia nor Yale is represented in the broad spectrum of the art world in a way that matches their vastly outsized reputations.  Nor do I believe that the education you would receive there is so much better than many other schools simply because of the brand.  And it's very difficult for a program such as Northwestern's, which is so small, to make much of a dent in terms of reputation simply because there are so few graduates out there.  Doesn't mean you can't get something great out of it--and there may be specific, specialized reasons for attending a particular program.  This is all just generalities. 
 
There is another thing to consider as well.  Students in programs full of "star" artists (such as Columbia, though I have no specific knowledge of the particulars there) sometimes find they have very little contact with these stars, who aren't all that interested in teaching.  It's true in other disciplines as well.  The academic star may only teach one small class per semester (and may even be out of town for a lot of the time as well).  Keep that in mind when looking at faculty lists, and ask those questions about faculty contact when investigating programs. 

Good lord.  If you have a good package at UCSB, I'd forget about OSU.  The only one on your list I'd take over UCSB is U. Washington.  (And I suppose most people would say, Columbia as well.)

Double check, but I don't think Edward Sullivan is actually at the IFA.  He's at NYU.  There's a separate art history department there, even though the IFA is part of the university.  I'm not sure how much the faculty cross over.

UNM and Princeton have reputations in photo history. I actually have a personality conflict with Anne McCauley, but others I known who've worked with her absolutely loved her.

For the MA level, Arizona is BIG into photo, so that's a good option.

You should send Eggleston a fruit basket for doing all that good research for you.

You say, "I'm really sorry to bother you, but the schools to which I'm applying don't use Interfolio. They have their own specific online forms and requirements. Let me know if there's any issue with that--I think you can just copy and paste the text portion." And if possible, "Professors A and B said it only took them about five minutes for each application."

Listen, if you guys were offended or hurt just because someone referred to some artwork as "dismal," then maybe you better look for another field. And you're certainly not ready for grad school. You'll hear a lot worse there, and it will be said to your face about your own work.

By the same token, the OP's subsequent rant was a bit of an overreaction as well, if you ask me.

This thread is a perfect example of why it is important for everyone to learn to write clearly.

Do you not realize that in your topic you asked about programs in the "Middle East?" That would be Israel, Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, etc.

I think you want to know about the "Midwest" and "Mid-South".

I think things have changed a little since I went to grad school years ago, but you definitely do NOT need to know an actual dissertation topic. You DO need to state a field of interest that relates to some of the current faculty. It can be as simple as, "I'd like to research 16th-century Italian painting, particularly in the Veneto. I would look forward to working with Professor X, whose book on Veronese has provided a model and a major resource for some of my previous research." Something like that.

I actually got in without doing that, but that was another era. Even more confusing, I changed periods from my MA thesis as I entered the PhD program.

You're not locked into anything once you're admitted, however.

Claremont isn't expensive if you get the appropriate financial aid. You should not go ANYWHERE if they are not paying all or most of your way. As far as "I would definately not go to Tennessee or anywhere in the south," sorry to see that you're letting bizarre regional biases limit your potential. Because it certainly sounds as if you're rejecting an entire region based on nothing. Of course, you're entitled to do that if you wish.

I'm assuming you'll take more care with spelling and punctuation in your application than in your writing here.

Sure to be controversial. This is from the Art History Blog. The industrious author (god bless him) went to the trouble of trying to make sense of the new NRC grad program rankings. Basically, he just averaged the two different ranking categories in order to create numbers for a single ranking. The original list was complex (and all prospective grad students should refer to it, as it provides a lot of interesting data about length to degree, financial aid, etc.) I should also add that this is based more on objective data than the old "reputational rankings," where they just ask people what are the best programs in the field. It helps to eliminate the ones that are resting on their laurels.

NRC Rankings, Revised

by Jon Lackman | 1 September 2011 | Books, Career
I just discovered that the NRC revised its rankings back in April after discovering errors in its data. So, I should go back and revise the findings of my last post on this subject. Using my (admittedly arbitrary) method of average the NRC two rating systems, I get this revised ranking:

1 University of California-Berkeley
2 University of Chicago
3 Columbia University in the City of New York
4 Yale University
5 Princeton University
6 New York University
7 Harvard University
8 University of California-Los Angeles
9 Northwestern University
10 University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
11 University of Texas at Austin
12 University of Pennsylvania
13 Massachusetts Institute of Technology
14 Duke University
15 Brown University
16 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor
17 University of California-Santa Barbara
18 University of Southern California (*)
19 University of Wisconsin-Madison
20 City University of New York Grad. Center
21 University of Pittsburgh Pittsburgh Campus (*)
22 Stanford University
23 University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (*)
24 University of Maryland College Park
25 Bryn Mawr College
26 Temple University
27 University of Delaware
28 Johns Hopkins University
29 Washington University in St. Louis (*)
30 Penn State University
31 Emory University
32 University of Washington
33 Rutgers the State University of New Jersey New Brunswick Campus
34 Indiana University at Bloomington
35 University of Minnesota-Twin Cities (*)
36 Case Western Reserve University
37 University of Kansas
38 University of Georgia
39 State University of New York at Stony Brook
40 Boston University
41 University of Iowa
42 University of Virginia
43 Ohio State University Main Campus
44 University of Missouri – Columbia
45 Cornell University
46 State University of New York at Binghamton
47 Florida State University
48 Virginia Commonwealth University
49 University of New Mexico Main Campus
50 University of Louisville
*: An asterisk indicates that the program scored the same as the one above it.

I think this is crucial. You need to constantly challenge yourself. So pick a grad school different from your current environment, and IF you think you have an idea where you want to settle, you need to move there AFTER. If you're in the southeast and want to live the NYC artist life, go to grad school in L.A. If you're in NYC and want to come back, you owe it to yourself to experience something different. Go to Iowa.

I've never heard of a program that required you to do the translation exam for admission. People in my PhD program were still trying to pass the German exam the semester they were turning in their dissertations!

Take German, by the way.

I've never heard of a program that required you to do the translation exam for admission. People in my PhD program were still trying to pass the German exam the semester they were turning in their dissertations!

Take German, by the way.

If that's what "metamodernism" means, they need a better word.

UNM and Princeton have reputations in photo history. I actually have a personality conflict with Anne McCauley, but others I known who've worked with her absolutely loved her.

For the MA level, Arizona is BIG into photo, so that's a good option.

You should send Eggleston a fruit basket for doing all that good research for you.

WM, you could also go the other way. Just look at your work and change your statement to reflect it better. But for me, that wouldn't solve the problem of the pieces looking like figure studies.

If you were my student right now, I'd suggest that you forget about your statement and all this "isolation" and alienation. Instead, do some actual studies, except experiment much more broadly.

1. Do a non-representational painting that uses all of your favorite painting tricks and focuses purely on a challenging composition.
2. Do a painting with a tiny figure.
3. Do a painting with an entirely imagined figure doing something mundane, but unexpected.
4. Do a painting with a group of figures (more than 4) that conveys a narrative.

While you're at it, switch media. Make a sculpture. Incorporate collage. Sometimes that can be really cathartic.

UNM and Princeton have reputations in photo history. I actually have a personality conflict with Anne McCauley, but others I known who've worked with her absolutely loved her.

For the MA level, Arizona is BIG into photo, so that's a good option.

You should send Eggleston a fruit basket for doing all that good research for you.

UNM and Princeton have reputations in photo history. I actually have a personality conflict with Anne McCauley, but others I known who've worked with her absolutely loved her.

For the MA level, Arizona is BIG into photo, so that's a good option.

You should send Eggleston a fruit basket for doing all that good research for you.

Ahhh. Good. It's very difficult to do. You're going to have to think carefully about who the figures are, how they are posed, what settings they're in, how they're dressed, etc. Thinking is the hardest part about making art.

Part of the problem is there are a lot of self-portraits that look like studies. If you're going to have a bunch of self-portraits taken seriously, you have to be like Rembrandt. He was always painting himself as characters (or Cindy Sherman!). You're going to have to pick (or invent) models based on what you want to express, not on what's available to you. They're not interchangeable neutral components. Think about what the painting's theme is going to be, then decide what physical type will express that best.

Think about scale: what about some tiny figures? What about close ups of some portion of a figure? Think about composition--HARD. Your compositions aren't particularly unusual or innovative--that's another reason they seem like studies. Space? There's a lot of undefined, flat backdrops, as though figures are floating in limbo (again--reads as "figure study"). Everybody is at a sort of middle distance, even if they're cropped.

On the other hand, you could go the other direction and make the figures flatter, more abstract, more symbolic.

Lots of options to explore.