Art Colleges Around the World
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knowledge of human experience, through aesthetic investigation.

We teach our students to think visually, and to develop an understanding of the strategies that artists have devised to deal with aesthetic problems in both traditional and nontraditional methods of artmaking. Ultimately, students develop a creative intelligence through practicing a visual arts discipline.

The graduate program, leading to the MFA degree in the Department of Art Practice at UC Berkeley, is a two year course of study that emphasizes concentrated studio work in the broadly defined areas of painting, drawing, sculpture, printmaking, digital media and new genres.

The aim of the program is to broaden the visual, intellectual and aesthetic faculties of students in their pursuit of careers as dedicated and serious professional artists. Applicants to the program are judged on the basis of the technical proficiency, intellectual sophistication, and invention evident in slides of their creative work, and admitted students are expected to make a full-time commitment to artmaking, while enrolled in the program. Approximately 7-9 of 100-150 applicants are accepted into the program each year and are provided individual studios to pursue their work as well as access to the broad variety and wealth of resources on the Berkeley campus.

The graduate course of study is intended to be a two-year, supportive laboratory for young artists engaged fully in their own and their colleagues' investigations. In this environment, emphasis is placed less on the production of competent art objects per se than upon the creative, intelligent exploration of visual ideas.

For that reason, there are no absolute parameters on the kind or amount of work expected from each student. Instead, the goal of the program is to develop within each student a level of commitment to artmaking as a way of thinking and seeing that is rich enough to transform common sight into uncommon insight.

http://art.berkeley.edu/rev2/pStudents/academics.html

Please visit the University of California, Office of Undergraduate Admissions' website, at: http://admissions.berkeley.edu/


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