Master of Arts (MA) The Master of Arts degree programs provide a generative context for advanced scholarly inquiry into the major ideas, institutions, and discourses of contemporary art and the sociocultural and political conditions of its production. Working with artists, historians, theorists, curators, practitioners, and thinkers from diverse disciplines, MA students participate in seminars, research and writing colloquia, internships, and travel opportunities. These interdisciplinary offerings prepare the student to identify and pursue an individualized course of study that will culminate in the final research thesis. Notable areas of study include: the influence of media and notions of reproducibility; the role of the artist as social researcher, interventionist, or activist; the influence of globalization; postcolonial theory; psychoanalysis; discourses of multiculturalism; the legacy and currency of feminism; and the lineage of modernism and postmodernism. MA students engage and collaborate with artists from the MFA program, turning research and inquiry into practice. Students also gain practical experience in the arts and broaden the scope of their research through professional collaborations and internships with notable Bay Area arts institutions such as the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The culmination of the MA degree is the completion and public defense of a thesis dissertation as well as the completion of the MA Collaborative Project—an interdisciplinary project that coalesces the major concerns of the students in the program into a multifaceted public work. E X HIBITION A N D M USEU M ST U DIES
The role of art in a broader culture of spectacle is an increasingly pressing challenge for contemporary cultural production and exhibition. Museums, galleries, and other conventional exhibition spaces are not only spaces for collecting and displaying art works, they also serve as laboratories for artistic
experimentation and production, and as sites for creative intervention. Grounded in research and critique, SFAI’s Exhibition and Museum Studies program provides students with the historical, theoretical, and practical understanding necessary to thrive in this complex network of culture production and spatialization. HISTORY A ND THEORY OF CON TEMPOR A RY A RT
The History and Theory of Contemporary Art program provides students with an in-depth and critical understanding of the history of the ideas, conditions, institutions, and discourses surrounding contemporary art and culture, and how these inform the study, interpretation, analysis, and exhibition of art today. The program’s curriculum addresses complex issues such as the interrogation of the hierarchies of artistic mediums initiated by the historical avant-gardes, the globalization of culture, the intersection of Western and non-Western modernity, the role of technology in art-making, and questions of authorship in the practice of contemporary art. UR BA N ST U DIES
The Urban Studies program emerged in response to pressing social issues of contemporary life (increasing urban populations, inequality, migration, new cultural geographies, and the effects of a global economy), all of which are radically transforming cities worldwide. In a fine arts context, the aim of the program is to address these issues through a synergy between academic and studio practice, encouraging students to create work that directly engages urban life, as well as to creatively expand urban methodologies and epistemologies. The program emphasizes the role of visuality in art, modernity, and urbanism; the politics of space and built environments; and the production of various forms of urban knowledge.
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Studio of Seulhwa Lydia Eum