MFAFine Arts
Overview
Expand your creative practice
Study in the culturally diverse Bay Area
Known for its long history of political activism and radical thinking, the Bay Area remains an epicenter of diverse and socially progressive ways of making art and imagining creative participation. Located in the heart of San Francisco, the graduate program in Fine Arts is part of an extraordinary ecosystem of art institutions—from alternative artist-run venues, to nonprofit and commercial galleries and major museums, including the college’s own premier exhibition space, the CCA Wattis Institute for Contemporary Arts. The curriculum is designed to encourage students to engage these resources and communities, exploring the opportunities afforded outside the studio and seminar room walls.
Studios and shops
Immerse yourself in an artistic community
Every full-time, in-residence MFA student making satisfactory academic progress is provided a private studio in which to work. The program’s graduate studios are located on the third and fourth floors of Hooper Tower. The studios are home to the graduate program and feature reserved space for critiques, a shared kitchen, a small lounge, and a resource hub for quick access to hand tools for installation to support work and creative growth in all artistic forms.
Note: Studio space is provided to dual-degree students in MFA Fine Arts and MA Visual & Critical Studies for four continuous semesters and one summer session in the first two years of their studies. In their third and final year, dual-degree students are eligible for shared studio space (typically, two students per studio) for their two remaining consecutive semesters, if space is available.
Tailor your course of study
The program supports a wide range of interdisciplinary practices, discourses, and histories. Individual studio critique, the core curriculum, and a wide range of open electives across fields encourage experimentation and individualized in-depth research.
Collaborate with visiting artists
Close contact and collaboration with a wide range of visiting artists complements the curricular work done with program faculty. Each year, a distinguished artist teaches a month-long Residency Intensive, and the Larry Sultan Visiting Artist Program brings prominent photographers and media artists to give public presentations and engage with students annually. Recent visitors have included Judith Butler, Jibade-Khalil Huffman, Shannon Ebner, Lyle Ashton Harris, Mickalene Thomas, An-My Lê, Nairy Baghramian, Ralph Rugoff, Collier Schorr, Tania Bruguera, Deana Lawson, Walid Raad, Thomas Demand, and Kai Althoff.
Make socially engaged art
The theory and practice of social engagement is a central, distinctive ethos of the MFA Fine Arts program. As home to the nation’s first Social Practice program, CCA’s graduate studies supports social engagement throughout the MFA curriculum as well as a specialized social practice workshop that focuses on urban environments, regional communities, research-based practice, or institutional structures.
CCA’s resources at your fingertips
- Model-making shop
- Photography studios and darkrooms
- Foam room
- Alternative materials shop
- Printmaking and bookbinding equipment
- Metalworking shop
- Letterpress studio
- Woodworking shop
- Digital fabrication tools
- Foundry and forge
- Materials reuse center
- Cement and plaster studio
Faculty
Active professional artists, writers, and curators
The program’s distinguished faculty is composed of internationally active artists, critics, curators, and scholars. The faculty’s vast experience working with institutions and communities in many diverse art worlds gives Fine Arts graduate students a wide collective pool of expertise from which to draw as they formulate and refine their own individuated artistic position.
Christine Tien Wang, Chair of MFA Fine Arts.
Christine Tien Wang received her BFA from The Cooper Union and her MFA in painting from UCLA. Wang completed residencies at the Jamaica Center for Arts and Learning, VCUQatar, Chashama North, and Skowhegan. Solo exhibition venues include Galerie Nagel Draxler in Cologne, Berlin, Night Gallery in Los Angeles, The Hole Bowery, and Ever Gold [Projects] in San Francisco. Selected group exhibition venues include Kunsthaus Zürich, Frans Hals Museum, M Leblanc Gallery, Arsenal Gallery, 56 Henry, Foxy Productions, Rachel Uffner, Magenta Plains, Blum and Poe, and The Prince Street Gallery. Wang is in the collection of Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Groeninghe Art Collection in Belgium. Wang is represented by Night Gallery in Los Angeles and Galerie Nagel Draxler in Cologne and Berlin. Wang is currently chair of Graduate Fine Arts at California College of Art and lives and works in San Francisco.
Two CCA faculty win SFMOMA’s SECA Art Award
Congratulations to Illustration faculty member Lauren D’Amato and Associate Professor of Critical Studies and Graduate Fine Arts Angela Hennessy.
Queer Threads exhibit opens at San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles
The highly anticipated Queer Threads exhibit makes its Northern California debut at the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles on May 12 and features work by CCA alumni and faculty.
Angela Hennessy is awarded 2021 Joan Mitchell Fellowship
Curriculum
Intensive course of study
Over the course of four semesters, you’ll be immersed in research, artmaking, and collaboration. Individualized critique of studio work forms the core of the program’s curriculum. Students engage in one-on-one meetings with faculty and visitors each semester and participate in group and peer-to-peer critiques. In addition to this dialogue, students take fine art and theory seminars and open electives, offered by all 11 graduate programs. Interdisciplinary exchange characterizes the program and the discussions, and the program culminates with a written thesis and exhibition project.
To get a feel for what awaits, view sample courses.
MFA Fine Arts
Year 1: Fall Semester
- Individual Studio Critique
- 6.0 units
- Dialogues and Practices I
- 3.0 units
- Contemporary Art History and Theory
- 3.0 units
- Fine Arts Seminar or Grad-Wide Elective
- 3.0 units
Year 1: Spring Semester
- Individual Studio Critique
- 6.0 units
- History and Theory Elective
- 3.0 units
- Dialogues and Practices II
- 3.0 units
- Fine Arts Seminar or Grad-Wide Elective
- 3.0 units
Year 2: Fall Semester
- Individual Studio Critique
- 6.0 units
- Exhibitions Seminar 1
- 3.0 units
- Thesis Seminar
- 3.0 units
- Fine Arts Seminar or Grad-Wide Elective
- 3.0 units
Year 2: Spring Semester
- Individual Studio Critique
- 6.0 units
- Exhibitions Seminar 2
- 3.0 units
- Fine Arts Seminar or Grad-Wide Elective
- 3.0 units
- Fine Arts Seminar or Grad-Wide Elective
- 3.0 units
Total 60.0 units
Careers
Creative and scholarly practitioners
MFA Fine Arts graduates participate in a wide variety of contemporary art contexts after they leave the program. They use their skills as socially engaged artists and thinkers to establish international careers as practicing professional artists, as well as to pursue an expansive array of other paths, including establishing their own collectives and exhibition spaces, teaching, critical writing, and arts administration. Notable recent alumni include Diedrick Brackens, Toyin Ojih Odutola, Sarah Hotchkiss, Carmen Winant, Zarouhie Abdalian, and Suné Woods.
Alumni success
Mallory Kimmel (MFA Fine Arts 2019)
Mallory Kimmel (MFA Fine Arts 2019)
Black X Film Festival is a three-day online showcase of films by Black creators, started by a collective of Black artists and allies, including several CCA MFA alumni.
Woody De Othello (MFA Fine Arts 2017)
Woody De Othello (MFA Fine Arts 2017)
Ahndraya Parlato (MFA Fine Arts 2005)
Ahndraya Parlato (MFA Fine Arts 2005)
Faculty members Kim Anno, Lucas Foglia, Guillermo Galindo, and Léonie Guyer, and alum Ahndraya Parlato are among those recognized for the prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship.
