Master of Fine Arts

For More Information

Campus address: Art Building (ART) 3.330, phone (512) 471-3377; campus mail code: D1300

Mailing address: The University of Texas at Austin, Graduate Program in Studio Art, Department of Art and Art History, 2301 San Jacinto Boulevard D1300, Austin TX 78712-1421

Contact: Clare Thoman, Graduate Program Coordinator

URL: https://art.utexas.edu/graduate/studio-art

Facilities for Graduate Work

Studios for all areas are housed in the Art Building, and graduate students generally have access to these facilities 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Graduate students are assigned an individual studio workspace; all students have access to a fully furnished wood shop that is also open evenings and weekends. Students have access to the 3D Fab Lab featuring equipment for three-dimensional milling, scanning, and printing. The studio art computer lab features fully equipped Macintosh graphics workstations and auxiliary hardware and software. Students also have access to the holdings of the Fine Arts Library, housed in the E. William Doty Fine Arts Building. Additionally, students have access to the cultural materials available for study at the Harry Ransom Research Center for the Humanities, to the circulating materials available at the Materials Lab in the School of Architecture, and to the exhibitions and collections of artworks housed at the Blanton Museum of Art.

The area studios contain the following facilities: for painting, well-ventilated, well-lit, individual studios within a communal suite; for photography, individual studios and access to the wet black-and-white and digital darkrooms with their attendant equipment; for printmaking, individual studios and access to the well-equipped print studio including presses for lithography, intaglio and serigraphy; for sculpture, private studios and access to fabrication facilities for casting, welding, and moldmaking; and for transmedia, a group studio with access to the performance facility with green screen and the computer lab with image processors, video cameras, video mixers with chroma-key functions, 16-mm film and digital multimedia equipment, and audio equipment.

Areas of Study

The interdisciplinary studio art graduate program is structured around five studio areas: painting and drawing; photography and media; print; sculpture and extended media; and transmedia (video/performance/digital media). Students are encouraged to practice across disciplines or conversely, to master a single area of studio practice. The curriculum is designed to privilege studio time while also delving into the academic riches available at The University of Texas at Austin. The course of study includes individual and group critiques, seminars taught by artists or art historians or other arts professionals, and discussions with visiting artists and critics. Students select a committee of three to four graduate faculty for whom, each semester, they present their work in service of a discussion and evaluation of their progress. 

Graduate Studies Committee

The following faculty members served on the Graduate Studies Committee (GSC) in the spring 2023 semester.

Beverly Dominique Acha Nicole Awai Alexander Birchler Troy D Brauntuch Scherezade Garcia-Vazquez Teresa Hubbard Beili Liu Kristin Lucas

Richard E McMaster Bogdan P Perzynski Margo L Sawyer Michael Smith John S Stoney Daniel D Sutherland Jeff Williams John A Yancey

Admission Requirements

The applicant must be an early-career artist with a bachelor’s degree in studio art. Applicants with bachelor’s degrees in other fields will be considered if they have completed substantial coursework in studio art and art history or if their portfolio proves demonstrated interest and accomplishment in studio art. Students apply to up to two of the five specializations and submit online a 20-image portfolio representing a coherent body of work made within the previous two years. Transmedia applicants must submit work online and may also provide additional materials on DVD or USB flash drive. Full application instructions are available on the program’s website.