Review boards: The ethos of an SMFA art education
The Museum School (now the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University) was one of the first schools in the country–if not the first–to introduce student review boards for both undergraduate and graduate students. This happened after William Bagnall, an artist and designer, became head of the school in 1968, and, much to the delight of the student body, he turned its existing formal structure upside down.
Bagnall hired young faculty to teach new ways of making and understanding art that questioned the longstanding European master/apprentice teaching style that the school had previously championed. He also pushed the school to do away with grades and replaced them with review boards.
Charles Goss, MFA ‘76, ultimately a longtime faculty member, first came to the school for his MFA in 1970 and saw this period of change firsthand. “There were no majors, no grades, and no rules about which classes you had to take,” Goss remembers. “The school shifted to focus on how to train creativity; it was no longer about training people to do things in a certain way.”
In the absence of grades, review boards became the vehicle for assessing students' progress. “Each semester, we’d have a review board of all the work from our classes. It was an hour and a half and included two faculty members and two fellow students. These reviews were a combination of critique, discussion, and recommended next steps.” Afterwards, faculty reviewers would submit written comments about the review for the student’s file.
Once Goss began teaching in 1982, he found himself on the other side of review boards, and their formats and venues varied widely. For instance, Goss remembers, “One of my students was a landscaper, a sculptor with a chainsaw. His review board was outside on Museum Road in the back of his truck bed, where he’d arranged all of his wooden sculptures.”
It might have been unconventional, and yet the student had taken it incredibly seriously. “That was exactly what we were looking for as faculty,” Goss says.
When Professor of the Practice Chantal Zakari began teaching at the school in 1997, after a chapter at the Art Institute of Chicago which had 15-week semesters and a typical grading system in place, review boards were a big adjustment for her. At SMFA at that time, faculty were expected to teach for 12 weeks and then dedicate the final three weeks of the semester to review boards. “That was a hard transition for me to make,” she reflects now. “At first, the multi-week review boards seemed to me like a lot to take away from class time.”
After a few semesters (and many, many review boards) under her belt, she changed her opinion. “I ended up appreciating the review boards and realizing how essential they are to the school. In fact, review boards are part of our ethos. Many other graduate programs around the country have reviews, but we’re different because we have them at the undergraduate level,” said Zakari, who now also serves as Associate Dean of Curriculum and Instruction.
In the decades since, Zakari has seen time and time again how review boards help both students and faculty grow. “I get to see what my colleagues are doing in their classes, how they teach, and the work that comes out as a result.” She also values being paired up with fellow faculty members she may not know well to get the opportunity to collaborate in a co-teaching moment.
SMFA courses continue to be pass/fail. However, as Zakari shared, “standards for being given a pass are rigorous. Review boards, as well as in-studio and external work, are used to assess critical skills, technical skills, and conceptual ideas to ensure that students are holistically progressing in their practices and deserving of their credits. While boards can certainly be a forum for strong critique, thoughtful scaffolding is in place to make them productive rather than destructive in tone. They are also a forum for mentorship–for suggesting that students view an exhibition or learn about an established artist, organization, or residency that directly relates to what they have recently accomplished and could be essential to their continuing development.”
Years later, SMFA still doesn’t have grades, and review boards continue to use the same format even since the school joined Tufts University in 2016. Today, SMFA students are still given the freedom to choose the space where they would like their review boards to take place, as well as to request specific faculty and peers to participate. Beforehand, they bring their entire body of work to that space and install it.
“At SMFA, we are about giving students the power to know what they want to do and the skills to be able to find their way,” Goss says. “It’s about becoming an entrepreneur in creativity.”
Image: Ashley Indarto, BFA '27, presents her work for Review Boards at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University on May 5, 2025. Photography by Alonso Nichols for Tufts University.
