The UD/ART 2-year M.F.A. program consists of around thirty students who work together in an intimate environment with faculty and grads from all concentrations and conceptual positions. Our graduate students have excellent on-campus studios and 24-hour access to state-of-the-art facilities. Studio resources and undergraduate programs include painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, and photography.

The University’s centralized location on the eastern corridor of the United States makes it an ideal location to study visual art. Situated midway between Philadelphia and Baltimore, the campus is about two hours by train/car north to New York City, or south to Washington, D.C.

For more information, we invite you to read through the UD/ART MFA Handbook.

To make important art is an automatically expansive process. It is a momentum and an action, disregarding traditional boundaries in favor of ideas and actualizations. The Department of Art at the University of Delaware realizes that the contemporary artist benefits from a thorough investigation of their own practice as well as wide-ranging feedback from others, and we strive to create an environment that encourages these conditions.

Our program is divided among research, practice, and discourse. Students are asked to take academic classes to encourage them to develop a language with which to discuss what they are doing; they are asked to keep up a dedicated studio practice where they are pushed to fully engage their interests; and they come together with this language and studio work for regularly-scheduled critiques. The M.F.A. program hosts a diverse faculty capable of responding to a range of work in a variety of conditions, and we foster a communal teaching model where students will dialogue with professionals and other graduate students outside of their perceived “field.” Our curriculum allows for both radical experimentation and a devoted effort to a unique vision.

We work to develop thoughtful, articulate artists through an M.F.A. program housed within a diverse University. We consider the University setting to be an ideal territory for the development of intellectually strong and challenging works of art, and we encourage our students to take advantage of the broad range of ideas being discussed outside of the arts. At the same time, the intimate size of our program allows for the graduate faculty to engage with students on an individual level, and to nourish work that comes out of a personal vision rather than any overarching philosophy of what art should be.

The University of Delaware offers generous Financial Aid assistance to UD/ART graduate students. The Art Department is able to give several merit-based Graduate Teaching Assistantships (tuition waiver plus a stipend in exchange for teaching and service) and Block Tuitions (tuition waiver plus the possibility of adjunct teaching). The Department works diligently to help support our M.F.A. student and has, historically, been able to fund nearly three-quarters of our students. Please refer to the Office of Graduate Studies for more information.

A minimum of 60 credits, a public exhibition and a supporting paper are required for the Master of Fine Arts degree. The 60 graduate credit hours required for the MFA degree are distributed in the following manner:

Studio Practice:
Group Critique:
Graduate Seminars on Research and Theory:
Non-art Academic:
MFA Supporting Paper and Exhibition:

36 credits
12 credits
6 credits
3 credits
3 credits

TOTAL CREDITS

60 credits

In some instances, the Department’s Graduate Admissions Committee may establish additional requirements to be met by the individual student. The MFA candidate’s progress will be reviewed by a committee at the end of each semester.

Program Coordinator:
» Lance Winn

Graduate Faculty Advisors:
» Virginia Bradley
» Abby Donovan
» René Marquez
» David Meyer
» Ashley John Pigford
» Troy Richards
» Priscilla Smith
» Robert Straight
» Peter Williams
» Lance Winn

» Graduate Admissions Information

Visiting artists and critics to the program have included:

Bill Arning
Melissa Chiu
Carlos Basualdo
Laura Heon
Ivo Mesquita
Hou Hanru
Hyunju Kim
Brian McCutcheon
Allison Saar
Nina Katchadourin
Elizabeth Murray
Judy Pfaff
Robert Storr
Jerome Witkin
Elizabeth Dworkin
Robert Birmelin
Leonard Kociansky
Donald Kuspit
Peter Plagens
Laurie Fendrich
Donald Lipski
Archie Rand
Willy Heeks
Thomas Nozkowski
Gary Stephan
Joel Shapiro
Stephen Westphal
Jerry Saltz
Beverly Fishman
Janet Fish
Don Colley
David Bates
Brian Rutenberg
Sue Coe
Ellen Burchenal
Gregory Amenoff
Sam Hunter
Dorothea Rockburne
Julie Heffernan
Nancy Brett
Gordon Moore
Robert Pincus Witten
Joyce Scott
Janine Antoni
Jacob Ciocci (of Paper Rad)
Brian Bishop
Buzz Spector
John Yau