Best 35 MAs in Fine Arts 2019

As a postgraduate student at NUA, you’ll accelerate your artistic practice, exploring the role of the artist in society and testing your ideas against contemporary issues and critical debates.

You may choose to specialise in – or combine – areas including painting, drawing, printmaking, photography, spatial and time-based practice. You’ll master skills relevant to your artistic interests and you’ll be supported in the development of wider expertise, from exhibition and presentation to ethics and audience awareness.

Working alongside students from other postgraduate degree courses at NUA, you’ll be part of a community of artists, makers and visiting artists that forms a stimulating and active research environment.... [-]

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Course outline

Immerse yourself in the many different roles illustration has to play in today’s globalised world with Falmouth University’s MA Illustration course. With its flexible online format, the course enables you to connect with a global network of like-minded creatives, offering a learning experience and creative space like no other. You’ll explore exciting new and innovative approaches to illustration, as well as illustration’s role as one of the world’s most vital means of visual communication. As a world-leading creative industries university, Falmouth has a rich history and a renowned reputation for creative excellence, with many Falmouth graduates going on to receive international recognition for their creative work. As a Falmouth MA Illustration graduate, you’ll join this international community of Falmouth alumni and get the opportunity to also make your mark and make solid connections within the visual communication industry. You’ll have the opportunity to push creative boundaries to become a thought leader on best practice in illustration.... [-]

You will embark on an innovative, mixed media, cutting-edge, transverse educational pathway which will mold you into a complete artist capable of expressing your own creative language in any artistic discipline.

Painting is an artistic discipline that permits the combining of passion and profession into a unique career and life choice. Studying Painting at RUFA, the student receives high-level multidisciplinary academic training and a full understanding of the techniques and qualities relative to the world of Fine Arts.

The two-year Master of Arts Degree Program in Painting at RUFA is a degree that provides a solid foundation in theory and practice, designed to place students at the center of a substantial network of knowledge and multimedia experience, that will form a complete artist, able to apply creative expression in any of the artistic disciplines.... [-]

MA Visual Communication: Illustration & Animation is a broad-based studio programme that offers the freedom to develop your own visual language and strong creative voice. With unique opportunities including internships with our industry partner Hearst Magazines UK, you will develop professional confidence alongside the creative, technical and digital skills essential for careers in the expanding fields of illustration and animation worldwide.

Based in our central Cambridge studios, over the intensive 12-month programme you will develop a strong grounding in research and inquiry as you advance your specialist knowledge. You will be encouraged to experiment with new techniques, media, and technologies, and respond to the new applications, platforms, and spaces in which contemporary illustration and animation are produced and experienced today. Regular workshops will support you to embrace current industry-standard software, giving you the practical and digital tools you need for the creative workplace today - and tomorrow.... [-]

Advance your creative potential and develop your work to professional exhibiting level.

Taught by practicing artists of national and international standing.

Permanent individual studio spaces (for full-time students) and excellent technical expertise and support. This studio-based course encompasses the whole range of Fine Art, from painting and sculpture to video and live art. Each element is supported by excellent facilities and taught by nationally and internationally practicing artists.

The programme is designed to fully develop your individual creative potential in an ever-changing and challenging Fine Art environment.... [-]

Designed for students whose creative practice is predominately rooted in drawing. Candidates for the program will be seeking new contexts and experiences for developing established/existing practices. Drawing is understood as more than a support or preparation for other disciplines: it is considered the work. Each core workshop draws upon the individual investigations and questions arising and evolving in the studio as a starting point and provides the students with new contexts to rethink their work – to test out methods, materials, and ideas.The aim is to explore contemporary and emerging approaches to drawing alongside the continued acquisition and practice of academic skills. There is an expectation that students will explore a convergence rather than the opposition of the two. At PCA Students may choose either the 1-year MA Degree Track or the 2-year MFA (Terminal) Degree Track. The first year is common to both degree tracks with the exception of a spring semester Degree Project for MA candidates. MA students who choose to continue into the MFA would be required to complete the 3rd and 4th semesters and the MFA Thesis Project.The program is designed with an emphasis on professional practice and research, and, for the MFA program, with a focus on the teaching of drawing, providing students with possibilities to further their work outside the context of the school. Students are taught how to apply ‘drawing’ in its many forms to unfamiliar and diverse situations and are encouraged to invent projects that will continue beyond the scope of the... [-]

The MFA in Creative Writing program at Emerson College fosters a community of poets, fiction and creative nonfiction writers, editors, publishers and teachers. We are based in the heart of downtown Boston, historically a center of intellectual inquiry, creative endeavor, and innovation in education. MFA students at Emerson College engage with one another not only in the classroom but also in the greater cultural environment of Boston itself.

Learn more about Program Requirements and Curriculum »

As one of the longest-running creative writing MFA programs in the country, Emerson’s Department of Writing, Literature, and Publishing has attracted a faculty that is diverse in their capacities and adept in their fields. Nonfiction faculty members practice and teach the literary essay, memoir, biography, long-form narrative journalism, and opinion and arts commentary, making Emerson one of the most varied and challenging nonfiction programs nationwide. The fiction faculty is distinguished in all forms—the novel, novella, short story, and the short-short story. Our poetry faculty includes formalists as well as free-verse poets, with courses in the forms of poetry, translation, and the poetic sequence. A distinguishing feature of our MFA is the opportunity for students to have a translation/global engagement focus on their degree. MFA students can count on the mentoring of our faculty members during and after completing the program.... [-]

The MFA provides an immersive education in the development of professional practice as an artist. As an MFA graduate you will produce a final exhibition, the quality of which will demonstrate that you have developed the knowledge and skills necessary to survive and thrive as a practicing artist. You will also demonstrate capabilities for critical enquiry through fine art, with the ability to evaluate your work through an informed grasp of the social, cultural and theoretical concerns shaping discourse on contemporary fine art research and practice.

The MA provides a masters-level education in art appropriate to a diverse range of applications. As an MA graduate you will produce a final exhibition, the quality of which will demonstrate that you have acquired a masters-level in artistic practice. You will also demonstrate capabilities for critical enquiry through fine art, with the ability to evaluate your work through an informed grasp of the social, cultural and theoretical concerns shaping discourse on contemporary fine art research and practice.... [-]

Master of Fine Arts in AnimationThe MFA program enjoys state-of-the-art facilities in which students can create in imaging arts computer animation is unique in that it is the only such program housed in a School of Film and Animation with full production facilities, as well as the additional support of highly specialized faculty in photography, imaging science, computer science and information technology, and printing.

Program goals

The program’s goals provide students with the opportunity to use animation, filmmaking, and other imaging arts as a means to:

Study at the World's number one ranked art and design university for five consecutive years (2015-2019) in the QS World University Subject Rankings.

The Animation programme is a world leader in practice and research, with a commitment to broadening the understanding of our complex discipline. Established over 30 years ago, the programme has an international reputation that places it at the forefront of the discipline. Within the programme, there are three distinct pathways: Documentary Animation, Experimental Animation and Narrative Animation, one of which students select as part of their application.

The programme’s location within a visually sophisticated, multidisciplinary art and design school, rather than a film school, is crucial in the development of creative and critical thinking, research skills and expanded discipline expertise that’s applied to ideas, styles, genres and technological approaches. Both the MA and research degrees attract artists and makers from a broad background of disciplines: science, maths, architecture, literature, art history, computing and fine art, as well as communication.... [-]

You are keen to gain more insight into the innovative potential of painting in a rapidly changing world. You are aware of the forces of physicality and materiality in artwork, and you take a painterly approach to conducting your experimental research into the functioning of perception psychology, cognition and imagination. A painting both reveals how ideas are imagined and shows how a material is edited and used. Taking a painterly and critical approach means harnessing materiality to create new links and associations. By combining ideation and materiality, transforming your ideas into unexpected, meaningful and powerful images, you determine the meaning and significance of your work in contemporary society.... [-]

Whether choosing to work within our nationally recognized disciplines/intensives (ceramics, drawing, jewelry and metalsmithing, painting, print media and graphic art, and sculpture) or across genres, artists can develop a course of study particular to their own self-initiated creative research.

With complete access to the faculty and studios throughout the School of Art, the M.F.A. in studio arts provides students numerous options of study, including seminars that focus on artistic practice, professional practice, and thesis development; critiques that emphasize cross-disciplinary dialogue; and a unique semester residency focused on career development. Focused on artistic practice while developing essential professional skills and abilities, the M.F.A. in studio arts prepares students to succeed in the field of contemporary art.... [-]

Offered by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts, the Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art is a rigorous interdisciplinary program that prepares graduate students for a career as a professional artist grounded in artistic innovation and creativity. The studio curriculum integrates practical and critical skills across diverse mediums and disciplines. The MFA program emphasizes intense and advanced individual studio practice, creative collaborations, informal mentorships, and rigorous academic discourse.

Master’s level graduate students attending SMFA at Tufts develop advanced professional competencies in the visual arts, including the understanding of issues both current and historical; the relationship of those ideas and broader world ideas; the development of a body of work in relationship to ideas and theory; and the realization of that work in a final thesis exhibition. There is also an emphasis on professional practice, meaning the skills necessary to develop and sustain a career.... [-]

The Arts and Culture research master at Leiden University is unique in offering a two-year programme that integrates art history and theory with literary studies and media studies.

An international focus

The MA in Arts and Culture (research) stands out by its global character, focus on design and applied arts, and integrated study of the visual arts and architecture. You will benefit from the programme's intense collaboration with the MA in Media Studies and the MA in Literary Studies.

A flexible curriculum

You can choose to focus on Arts and Culture, Media Studies or Literary Studies, or explore a single period (Middle Ages/Early Modern resp. Modern and Contemporary). The programme's flexibility will encourage you to adopt a interdisciplinary perspective.... [-]