My topic is "MFA: Is It Necessary?" To flesh that out a bit: Is it necessary to have an MFA in Visual Arts (or equivalent degree outside the US) to have a successful career as an artist?
As part of my research I've put together a brief survey and would love to know what you think. I'll post the results next week. Thank you in advance for participating!
Click here to take survey
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ReplyDeleteMFA programs create community for young artists, a process of feedback/critique, and valuable intersections with faculty. They also provide a teaching positions for graduates, which offers a little stability in a profession without much financial security. More than that, MFA programs offer a stretch of time to concentrate single-mindedly on making work to the exclusion of almost everything else, which is much like the experience of preparing for a solo show. All those things are crucial if you want to be a working artist, but that does not mean they are native or exclusive to MFA programs alone. Any of those elements can be found outside the academic world with a little effort, and sometimes with more unique individualized returns. In my experience, the quality of the work is far more important than the institutional credentials, when it comes time to exhibit. The fact of having earned an MFA isn't gonna get you a show, if you don't have the chops. I've hung two proper solo exhibitions and participated in all the major US art fairs, without an MFA, so I am an example of NO! You do not HAVE to accumulate debt and subsume yourself in an academic group masters identity in order to become a working artist.
ReplyDeleteMFA's are ridiculous. And they are, sadly, nearly required. I don't have one, yet everyone seems to look for this meaningless credential instead of judging the work in itself. And MFA's, aside from critiques and connections, do not teach a single tangible skill. I cannot think of any other field where you spend a shit-load of money to learn basically nothing. Many colleagues of mine who have an MFA are frustrated by being left with zero skills -- and all the bills. MFA programs are a scam -- it's a factory churning drones brainwashed by the the usual dogmatic and repetitive drivel. In the end the result is a vapid art world devoid of anything interesting.
ReplyDeleteIt's because of my MFA that I can teach philosophy and writing at NYU.
ReplyDeleteMaybe an MFA is good for developing disciplines and social/professional circles. But I doubt a degree will have more clout than the bottom line - compelling artwork. I've never thought about MFA's when viewing and appreciating art... NEVER. In fact, I would likely be disappointed to hear an artist's educational credentials if the work didn't speak for itself. My opinion, anyway...
ReplyDeleteAn MFA may help someone with the language of Grants,
ReplyDeleteCurriculum Vitae(?), etc.; but not with sincerity, passion, or desire. The education helps to know what came before, and learning of tools.
SR
I am currently in an MFA course, and I have had the experience of practicing my art without one for some time. I decided it would be good to have the community of peers to challenge me in the way I would not normally get in my day to day life before. I actually did go through the experience of a solo show(in NY no less), and the experience is like that, but much deeper in probing what the work can become. I choose a top program that is not cheap cheap but pales in comparison to the typical American schools (which is partly why I didn't do it before now). I am loving most of the experience of grad school, and hope that my dept burden will not be something I piss and moan about as a blockade to my judgement of a satisfactory career. I can say without a doubt I was that guy who was saying I think I can, I think I can with my BFA, and that was not a problem as I was shown in highly professional NY galleries, but some people need the time and focus coupled with a rigorous program to reach a bit farther than normal. I think it has taken away some of my inhibitions, and preconceived notions about the CV, and given me a big dose of perspective about myself that will serve my lifetime.
ReplyDeletespoke to a sculptor MFA who makes interior store fit outs for apple stores and many other great and interesting things for a very good complany. he makes prototypes for things they are thinking of developing. he said he went straight for his mfa no waiting around and he found it very useful and important in gaining employment and teaching him how to think. he's still doing his own work too but has this good job, which also allows creativity even on the job.
ReplyDeleteIt is true that there are successful artists who create a livelihood out of the success of their work alone, or artists who have terrible work but can market themselves to the same end, or mediocre artists who play the social networks well enough to find their success. The hard answer to the question of the MFA as necessary is yes and no. The better question I would ask is this. Is the MFA necessary to the success of the fine arts? In this case we remove the question from that of the individual and pose it to the collective. My answer is absolutely! It is the institution of the Master of Fine arts that bears at least to some degree the credibility we need as artists when compared to other terminal degrees within varying disciplines. Through careful instruction and time the discipline of art gains greater potency, accuracy, and definition. It is time set aside to liberate individuals within the craft to experiment upon it; a proverbial laboratory of aesthetic analysis. It is the defining of the craft that legitimizes our practice Democratically and allows it to function Capitalistically.
ReplyDeleteI have had a very successful career in the commercial arena without an MFA, but I am at a point in my life where the enrichment of working in an academic community, especially in higher education is very appealing. The freedom of time, the rich community of artists and students in an academic setting can be incredibly beneficial. I have the opportunity to teach in that setting and it is as much a learning opportunity for me as it is for the students. But an MFA is generally required to teach full-time at a university level so without it I am only able to teach part-time. So, I now regret never earning an MFA. I am now seriously considering grad school to settle that piece of unfinished business.
ReplyDeletethe only thing it technically does is allow you to teach.
ReplyDeleteI do not believe an MFA is necessary to create good art, at least not for those artists who appear to have an inherited talent for art, or some other means by which the create art from instinct and/or intuition. I have been blessed with this type of ability. I have no art education whatsoever, and found a working career in a highly technical, left brain, field. Yet, within me also exists a very active Right brain artist, there since childhood. I believe in what some others have suggested, that good art does not lie within having any type of educational degree, even though the two may go together at times, but rather in the art itself. If the art works, it works, regardless of what type of training the artist has undertaken. Good art can come from artists with a BFA or an MFA, but not ALL good art comes only from this type of artist.
ReplyDeleteApples are red round objects, but not all red round objects are apples.
MFA’s can produce good art, but not all good art comes from MFA’s
I am not angry about the educational component, I just do not do well in academic environments, despite having a fairly high IQ. I prefer the Self Taught type of education, and the Natural Ability that some people have to do certain specific things. I have no axe to grind and I am not defensive about who I am or the quality of my art. I have a long list of awards in Fine Art competitions, my art is loved by the majority of people who view it, general public, art lovers and other artists, all included. I sell enough to be able to say my art is well accepted. I also do not believe it is necessary to ‘make a living’ from art, in order to be a ‘good artist’, i.e. one who produces good art.
In the end, it is the art work itself that counts. Does it work? Does it draw out emotion? Is it accepted and recognized as good art by others? If the art speaks for itself, it just does not matter who made it, how they made it, what formal, or informal, training they have had, or where they live, or whatever else it is they do with their life. The art itself matters much more than the artist does. The artist is the creator of the art, the one who give the art it’s Life. Certainly the artist has a large role to play, but the artistic ego often gets in the way, making it more about the artist’s training and associations, etc., which loses the main point of it all. The art itself. Let us simply judge the art, and not the artist. I do not have a BFA, or an MFA, and I will never seek to have these, as my Art, does not need them.
I am weary of seeing artists tout their degrees and then consistently produce what I consider to be junk art. Enough already. I am not surprised as the colleges/universities who grant these degrees have long been enemies of conservative and realistic art that require careful attention to drawing, perspective, lost and found edges, color temperature,composition, values, etc.
ReplyDeleteMFAs are pyramid schemes
ReplyDeleteIt is not critical to posses an MFA. There are many self taught artists' that have amazing careers in the art world. Let's look at Francesco Clemente, who is an important artist. Self taught and has a place in art history. He is not alone. The process and finished product is what matters. Quite often there is a freshness and inventive element to work that has not been honed through an academic process. The essence of the art is what is important.
ReplyDeleteThe highest price ever paid for one of his paintings is US$100 million for a 1963 canvas . The private transaction was reported in a 2009 article in The Economist, which described him as the "bellwether of the art market." $100 million is a benchmark price that only Jackson Pollock, Pablo Picasso, Vincent van Gogh, Pierre-August Renoir, Gustav Klimt and Willem de Kooning have achieved.
ReplyDeleteThis guy did not have an MFA and I believe all he had was an associates degree. His art is obviously important and probably one of the most well known artists of the 20th century.
Personally, I believe that the concentrated graduate school experience was very beneficial as a conduit to more exploratory work conceptually and technically, which ultimately aided my subsequent entry into the professional world. In academic circles, the MFA in art is considered to be the terminal degree in the field, and is more often than not necessary to advance up the professorial ladder. I taught graduate students for many years (now retired) and enjoyed helping them find their way into more personal conceptual focus as well as cluing them into the complex labyrinth that faced them in "professionalism, as well as the academic route. I believe that the degree's value depends to a great extent the student's relationship with his or her teachers as well as fellow students, both of whom might become part of the personal link to the world of art and artists.
ReplyDeleteEach post has a point and the question does not have an easy answer--there are too many variables to consider. I think the question needs to be more specific. An artist planning to work within academia certainly needs and MFA, while an artist who does not care about a having the stability regular employment within their chosen field, may be better served by charting his or her own course without need or want of formal training. Some galleries and gallerists maintain close ties to this or that academic institution, while others do not. As meathead pointed out, it is not necessary to have an MFA to become successful, but it also may be helpful in some cases to have one. I am sure that the opposite point could be made by using a well known artists name who did obtain a graduate degree in art, i.e., there's no way to tell whether or not an artist will or will not be successful with or without an MFA, or that having or not having an MFA has everything or even something to do with success.
ReplyDeleteI have an MFA and enjoyed going to school and getting it...being in an MFA program is it's own reality...and having an MFA is pretty much a requirement for teaching.
ReplyDeleteBut nobody needs an MFA to be an artist, it might even hurt your chances given the idea that being "self taught" is such a big deal. (personally, I think we're all self taught anyway and don't see much value in being deliberately ignorant.)
The MFA is the required degree for professors, and was invented in the 1970's to give them a teaching credential. There's even now talk of creating a Ph.d program in fine Arts. No doubt someone will get that cash cow rolling soon, and every university will jump onboard after wards. But realistically, the whole creation of advanced degrees in the creative arts is part of the current 'inflation' of Academia here in the U.S. As with all commodities, it the 'rarity' that makes it valuable. Required Degrees can open doors in the professional realm, but making good art itself is generally independent of such external things. One purchases the prestige of the brand you buy " brand-Yale vs Brand RISD" Does it truly make a difference where you get your training, all things being equal? the level of professors vary at each school, as do the levels of students and the types of resources provided, not to mention the maturity of one's peers and oneself at the time. So the question is really tricky because Academia treats the Creative Arts as a branch of learning, much like the Humanities or Sciences. But is it? ...or is it a branch of questioning...of imagining...of subjective creativity? Does making art even engage the objective type of thinking that these other disciplines do? Does a poet need an MFA to make poems or a dancer need an MFA to make dances? It seems not to be the case so much, because throughout art history, the history has generally been made by the self-initiated. How many Impressionists or Ab-Ex artists had MFA's? none, I suspect. In anycase...the MFA is important for 'status' only...and as all humans are concerned with such things, our society gives it undue cred. Its really just two more years generally tacked on to 16 continuous years of schooling in order for the University to keep itself liquid. They should call it a 'fellowship' and open it to more people and make it cheap if it is so good for our artists to have. Otherwise it just becomes a way for the market to try and commodify an artists work. Academia, like museums have adopted marketplace tactics. They make money off the tuitions now, not endowments. They've spent the money on that new gymnasium or giftshop or whatever. So the students become the cashcow, and leave school saddled with debt, that will hobble them for years if not decades. The market wants a way to hedge its bets, and the school obliges by creating a credit and thereby making it a good investment for those art buyers out there. A lot like the stock market. People don't seem to trust their own taste anymore, or at least they only equate high prices with value, and those two things havn't been sympatico for a while now.
ReplyDeleteI would like to say ditto for comments not favorable to an MFA. It is usually the first question I am asked. It isn't that I find an MFA useless as in some situations it impresses and allows one to obtain a job that usually means an academic position if that is what a person wants. Additionally. for a public that has no understanding of artistic endeavor they believe it is an indication of quality. I agree that art has been turned into business subscribing to the same format. Art judges (often art teachers) of exhibitions seem to have no clue how to judge with little criteria to pit a work of art against and many require no written statements from artists to explain their intentions which I for one want to do. Having an MFA doesn't change that. Experiencing art should be rapturous. It is consuming passion to create and be involved in such. One is making statements through new technique or subject matter or technology or ways yet not thought of yet, and hoping to make world changes or express changes that are occurring. However, I find those with academic standing fail to recognize this, instead looking for saleability in the most mundane and "safe" work. As an artist my first goal is not to make money but to make a great piece of art that makes some kind of impact on an individual or a whole society. I want to feel I have left a part of myself and my life experience in the work. These days I find it's all about business, without soul.
ReplyDeleteFrom retired art teacher:
ReplyDeleteAs a teacher in the NYC you had to obtain a Masters degree of some sort to obtain tenure.
MFA was fine but yoou can use an related arts
education degree.
I have artist friends who obtained their MFA back in the late sixties and early seventies when their was not a glut of them around. At that time these degees helped them get tenured teaching jobs at great schools.
However those days have come and gone, there are too many MFA and not jobs. Most universities with program rather hire art super
stars to attract students.
Two of My friends had MFA from Yale,both females abandoned art altogether, one became a sucessful business women (mega rich today) and the other retrained and became a registed nurse so she can support herself and young son. (she is a single parent)
My point is that the MFA is not an important piece of paper to have, it does nothing for you, and most of the sucessful artist I know engineered their own arts education, by studying with and learning from other artist.
I have been noticing a trend by art reviewers and so called critics to put too much relevance into where an artist received their MFA. In most cases, it is one of their first comments. It is as if good art can no longer be made outside the realm of academia. A graduate degree can be helpful to artists who are stuck and need a push to reinvigorate themselves or who need to learn more about the craft.
ReplyDeleteProblems that I have seen with many MFA programs is that professors today feel the need to control and manipulate students into creating art based on their philosophies. I have seen very good artists ruined because they were forced into trying to expand themselves, to be more conceptual, to be more relevant. In a constant effort to please a theoretical mentor, they end up producing works that are forced and trite. Graduate programs were once about exploration of ideas and processes in an environment that fostered this exploration. Today, I see a highly competitive arena that pits artist against artist. Most quality artist that I know spent several years on their own practicing their craft and learning how to critique their own and efforts and learn what it takes to make quality work.
Another major issue I have seen is that most people go into these programs because they want to teach. The problem being that at no time during stint in an MFA program are they taught to teach. Our Universities are now crammed with professors who lack basic teaching skills and are often lost in classroom situations.
MFA’s are fine if one feels the need to get one and congrats to anyone who feels the desire to further educate themselves, but the trend of people outside of the creative process to emphasize the relevance of an MFA needs to cease. The ability to create good art for the most part is inherent to an individual and the level of education cannot change that.
It's more interested to find out an artist who has unexpected background:
ReplyDeleteEducation as psychology, archaeology, biology,...
Previous/recently job as clerk, janitor, grave digger,...
MFAs are an important credential, though not absolutely necessary (except for academic positions--and even there, we can point to a few exceptions to the rule). I think this survey is going to draw a self-selected group of anti-MFA folks, mostly those who are not formally educated in art and who thus see the MFA (and the "academic art world") as an arbitrary device for excluding people. The truth is, when speaking of good programs, artists with BFA and MFA degrees really do learn things about art that few autodidacts ever grasp--the training isn't meaningless or a scam or a sham or otherwise so easily dismissible as many of your commentators suggest, even if the artist emerges with no strong artisanal skills. (I'm talking about rigorous programs... there are some schools where there isn't a particularly intellectually demanding culture and the students don't get much out of it beyond time to work and a sheepskin; but this describes a poor program, not a fundamental problem with graduate study in art.) Strong MFA programs do prepare artists for the realities of professional practice in the international art world; look at the proportion of artists under 50, say, who appear in major museum exhibitions who hold the MFA: it is much, much higher than the proportion of aspiring artists who hold that degree. And it's worth noting that the highly successful artists tend to have received their MFAs from a relatively small number of schools--it's the quality of the academic experience, not the mere fact of being granted a degree, that matters.
ReplyDeleteTo get a MFA in art is a personal choice. I wanted to teach art at the higher education level so it was required. It also helps to understand the jargon that is required in applying for grants and fitting your art in the history of things in relationship to your contemporaries. But besides that, it is like boot camp for some and party time for others. That greatly depends on the school and the faculty. Sometimes it is mainly a "boys club". You learn how to play the politics (that is if you can stomach it) just like in any other field and there are politics everywhere in every aspect of life. Why do we have schools? Well, it is set up that way because someone decides this is what should be and then charges others to proceed to things that they have and may not want to share. Such is what education is really about. Making money and feeding into that system.
ReplyDeleteArt is no exception to this rule. Sure you can paint your butt off all day long and do the rounds to galleries but you didn't do boot camp so you look like a lazy Sunday painter and that is that!
I have an MA in Playwriting. I received this degree in 1990 before the proliferation of MFA programs. I now work at a professional theatre where I run a program in New Play Development and have for the last 5 years. Now my position is going to be outsourced to the University to which we are affiliated. I cannot apply for my own position due to the lack of what is considered a terminal degree in the field. This despite four Emmy awards, being on the Board of 2 major nationally recognized theatrical associations, countless other achievements, a track record of excellence professionally in the field, mentoring MFA track students who work with our programs through this same University, and often teaching at a very prestigious local College, and sometimes subbing at our University affiliate. Needless to say I am very bitter towards the attitude that an MFA takes precedence over real life experience and a long professional career in the arts.
ReplyDeleteWith the exception of teaching, not holding an MFA has not been a hindrance on a professional level, but it certainly generates a stigma from those within the academic system. While I truly appreciate the effort, expenses and accomplishments of those holding MFA degrees, for myself it was never possible to obtain an MFA due to family commitments. Even though I am a highly successful, multi-award winning artist, have taught at a public Arts High School and have recommendations from notable A-list artists, if I wanted to I could not teach even a beginning class at a community college without an MFA. This is in contrast to others I know who are teaching art in distinguished universities... one who 'took a few art classes' but majored and has an MFA in English, another whose BFA degree was in Science but then obtained an MFA in Studio Art with never having learned even the basics of Fine Art, and another who is a tenured professor holding an MFA from a top university, but is considered one of the worst teachers, is there only for the money and is very poorly regarded by the students ... they all may have the 'qualifications' and some of them may be good teachers, but I feel consideration should be taken outside the MFA arena for talent, accomplishment and professional experience.
ReplyDelete