Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art
Push boundaries – starting with your own.
Through a studio-based curriculum, our MFA program emphasizes advanced interdisciplinary practice, creative collaboration, mentorships, and rigorous academic discourse. During this two-year program, you'll join a vibrant and supportive community committed to making art that shapes our global society and collective future.
Studio Courses & Seminars
As an MFA student, you'll develop your studio practice by contemplating your work across disciplines. You’ll work closely with faculty and staff to develop a personalized studio curriculum, and will have access to resources across Tufts.
MFA students also take part in seminars that explore a variety of subjects within contemporary art. Seminars provide intensive individual guidance, mentoring, and a combination of individual and group critique. You'll advance your presentation, research, and art-making skills, and position yourself for a long and productive independent art practice.
Areas of Study
At SMFA, each area of study is a chance to immerse yourself in a specific discipline, or explore a range of different creative modes. Areas of study are how you'll deepen and expand your practice while exploring what it will take for you to realize your vision. You'll build an individualized set of skills and experiences that you will carry with you into your professional career.
Liberal Arts & Sciences
A Master of Fine Arts from SMFA combines intensive studio arts training with the immersive liberal arts curriculum of a major research university. All MFA students take one graduate-level art history class and three liberal arts and sciences electives that are important to their thesis, studio practice, and artistic development.
Admitted MFA students may choose to also apply into an optional Museum Studies concentration. If accepted, the Museum Studies program's five courses count toward a student's non-studio course requirements for the MFA program.
Learn more about Liberal Arts & Sciences
Review Boards & Critiques
Critiques are a crucial part of our MFA program, and a driving force in the growth and transformation of your practice. You'll receive ongoing feedback through informal discussions with faculty, fellow students, visiting artists, and curators, while formal critiques like Review Boards and the Graduate Group Critique are important checkpoints for assessing progress and growth. Every step of your SMFA journey is a chance to think about the ideas and techniques that propel your work and creative voice.
MFA Thesis & Exhibition
The MFA program culminates in a self-curated final exhibition where you consider the broad implications of your practice and the questions that your work seeks to answer. You'll also write a thesis that articulates the process, research, and intention that anchors your work, and defend it before a committee of faculty and a visiting juror. Both the thesis and the exhibition are significant achievements and a celebration of your evolution as an artist. They demonstrate that you are ready to succeed as a working professional artist, whatever form your career might take.
Professional Development Opportunities
In addition to building upon your artistic skills, learning new techniques and further developing your art practice, your time at SMFA is also an opportunity to further your professional development. You can take full advantage of countless student exhibition opportunities, visiting artists, and the resources of our Career Center.
Graduate Teaching Assistantships
Exchange and Travel Opportunities
As an MFA student at SMFA you will have the opportunity to apply for the Hamburg Exchange Program and the Montague Travel Grant. Through these programs, our students travel internationally prior to the completion of their degree.
Graduation Requirements
MFA students must complete a total of 68 credits. Coursework is primarily in studio art, graduate group critique, and graduate level seminars, but also includes art history and liberal arts electives.
Celebrating the Legacy of Performance Art at SMFA at Tufts
A landmark Tufts University Art Galleries show looks back at 50 years of Mobius Artists Group and a student-led series takes inspiration
From the Familiar to the Fantastic
More than Beauty
Abby Clemens, MFA '23, discusses her methodological approach to art making, her areas of research, and her sound-art heavy interdisciplinary practice.