The Master of Fine Arts in Art program is a two-year, full-time, studio-based program located in the center of Los Angeles. The expansive city is home to a vital local art community and international gallery and museum scene with five arts districts: Downtown, Culver City, Mid-Wilshire, Hollywood, and Chinatown. With a select cohort enrolled each year, the program provides a unique experience that focuses on interdisciplinary and wide-ranging experimental, creative, and intellectual exploration.

The MFA program offers six areas of specialization: Ceramics, Interdisciplinary Studio, New Genres, Painting and Drawing, Photography, and Sculpture. These studio areas are supplemented by seminars and lectures in contemporary critical theory. The program emphasizes the development of a sustained artistic practice through exploration, experimentation, and intensive studio work and study. Opportunities to investigate areas beyond one's concentration are made available.

The MFA Fine Arts Program is open, inclusive, and interdisciplinary. We are looking for advanced artists who are engaged and committed to exploring an art practice in its various forms, traditions, and contexts. We emphasize interdisciplinary critical dialogue and lifelong learning within our intimate community. Our Art + Social Practice emphasis is an optional concentration that explores and encourages collaboration and builds skills to work in the social field. You will be simultaneously supported and challenged. In Critique, you will learn to discuss your own and others’ work and attempt to locate it within wider cultural debates. Individual studio meetings with faculty will offer you one-on-one conversations on work in progress, ideas, readings, or plans. In Art History and Theory seminars, you will read, write, discuss, and consider various histories, methodologies, and frames of thought. Professional Practices will prepare you to sustain a lifelong practice. Our Visiting Artist Lecture Series brings distinguished artists, curators, and thinkers into close dialogue with students. Studies culminate in a written thesis and final MFA exhibition. All full-time graduates work in their own individual studios located at the graduate campus in Culver City. Residencies in Paris, Mexico City, and Anderson Ranch in Colorado are exclusively reserved for Otis graduate students and alums. A fellowship with the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena is also available to Otis graduates.

The MFA Design Program is a five-term 56-unit studio-based program that is designed to support the development of a personal contemporary practice that is both unique and sustainable. Students work closely with USC Roski's internationally acclaimed design faculty, as well as an expanded community of leading professional designers, artists, historians, critics, curators, and culture makers who participate in regular Visiting Designer/Designer-in-Residence Forums. The scope of the program will provide graduate design students with a critical examination of the issues, theories, and ideas that are relevant to contemporary design and studio practice in design, with a focus on the following objectives: Increase your ability to analyze graphic design (along with architecture, fashion, art, and other cultural production) including describing them with appropriate vocabulary, examining their formal elements, and engaging in research to understand their contexts (both contemporary and historical);