The Graduate Program in Fine Art sees art as an important - even profound - contributor to global culture, society and thought. Our program stimulates students to achieve an understanding of their skills and ideas through a critically engaged artistic practice while providing them with a greater awareness of the global context within which contemporary art is made and circulated. Artists from around the world stream through the program each semester, providing the student contact with some of the most engaging art and ideas. Our program’s purpose is to produce artists who seek to change the landscape of contemporary art by extending its rhetorical forms and challenging its conventions and boundaries.

The program has an interdisciplinary orientation, both supporting the crossing and merging of mediums as well as the investigation and use of content from diverse areas of thought, such as philosophy, anthropology, science and technology. Contemporary visual art is embedded in a set of questions about the cultural location of the artist, audience, site, and relevant institutions, as well as the social, political, and intellectual implications of their intersections. These questions are addressed through a series of required and elective classes as well as in the rigorous reviews of the student’s work by a team of faculty each semester, all of which culminates in the exhibition and thesis projects.

I would like to congratulate the 2007 Graduate Fine Art students for completing this demanding course of study, production and review. I feel particularly close to this class because I started as Chair at the same time they began the Graduate Fine Art Program. We have been on a two-year adventure exploring ideas, and the means to manifest them, which has been quite gratifying. As difficult as this process can be at times (how could something so significant be otherwise) the results can now be seen. There is an impressive depth of thought and creativity here that is a testament to the commitment and engagement of the producers. I look forward to watching their work enter the world and make its impact.

Brian Conley
Chair of Graduate Program in Fine Arts