Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art

[longtimecoming]

Hi everyone,

Has anyone been admitted to Goldsmiths' MFA in Fine Art, and is primarily a painter?

I have heard that it is a very challenging program for painters and I'd love to talk to others about this. By challenging I mean: faculty are very skeptical of the merits of paintings overall, and thus students are frequently in a position of justifying why they are painting in the first place. This seems to not be the case with other mediums. Many former students found this very frustrating.

Other concerns:

I've also heard mixed reports about whether Goldsmiths attracts gallerists/critics to their MFA thesis show. Of course, this is not the only reason to apply to an MFA program, but I believe if you are going to blow thousands of dollars on a program, it should give you some kind of professional exposure. Unfortunately, I heard from past students that "Goldsmiths is run by Marxists who don't believe in the traditional art world conventions, are skeptical of paintings (for their commercial value in the art world) etc..." It's all rather disheartening to me, because while I am fully on-board with being critical of art world conventions, I also want to have gallery representation and make a living via any avenues available to me. Sigh. If anyone can speak to this, I'd be all ears.

Also learned recently that they are cutting a bunch of teachers ("tutors", translating for Americans like me) and replacing teachers with a few top tier management positions. In addition, they are integrating the rest of the university with the art program, which many on the inside are saying would be a disaster. Their have been a number of protests this year about this. I'm gleaning all of this from afar, so hard to say what is true and what I should really care about. This forum has been a huge help to me so I thought I'd try!

Thanks, all!

[imnotsure]

did you ever get an answer for this?