Department of Visual Art Graduate Program in Studio Art

Click to download the MA/MFA application in pdf format.

Located near Lake Michigan on Milwaukee's northeast side, UWM's 92-acre campus is surrounded by county parks that offer scenic beauty and outdoor activity all year long. The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee combines the excellence of the University of Wisconsin System with the resources only a major metropolitan area can offer.

Milwaukee is Wisconsin’s largest city and boasts a lively arts community to which the Department of Visual Art actively contributes. Recent developments include an energetic local alternative art scene as well as international attention brought to the city by the Santiago Calatrava-designed addition to the Milwaukee Art Museum. The Institute of Visual Arts (Inova), UWM’s exhibition venue for contemporary art, contributes to the city's cultural vitality. Chicago and Madison are also within close driving distance, offering a host of arts opportunities.

Program Overview
The Department of Visual Art offers a Master of Arts (MA) degree and a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree, 30 credits and 60 credits respectively. The graduate program encourages interdisciplinary activity and exploratory models of thinking and production. Theory and practice are closely linked through Graduate Seminars and Art History offerings, as well as a very active Visiting Artist and Scholar program. Graduate students are encouraged to explore an area of study in depth and to experiment across media and discipline, with encouragement and opportunities to explore hybrid processes, as well as engage in the history and traditions of art.

The graduate program is interdisciplinary, yet a student can focus within the following broad categories:

Painting and Drawing
Sculpture
Ceramics
Fibers
Digital Imaging and Photographic Processes
Print and Narrative Forms
Design and Interactivity
Jewelry and Metalsmithing
Intermedia

The program is structured to ensure a broad and balanced integration of media, processes and concerns allowing a rich combination of tradition and innovation. Engagement with disciplines outside of Visual Art and within the local, national, and international community is also encouraged, expected and supported. The hallmark of the department is its commitment to diverse ideas and approaches to art that foster an experimental attitude in keeping with contemporary art practice.

Facilities
There are well-equipped studio facilities that offer access to a wide range of tools and equipment in each disciplinary area. These studios and labs are housed within our campus buildings, as well as within our new Kenilworth facility.

In 2006, the new Kenilworth Building became home to all graduate studios. This is a stand-alone renovated factory building on Milwaukee's East Side, less than a mile from the UWM campus. Kenilworth contains studios for all of the arts, including dance, film, music and theatre, and will also contain gallery space, a screening room, various installation sites and studio facilities. It is in a thriving neighborhood of coffee-shops, bars, restaurants and movie houses, and is next door to a graduate housing facility. All graduate students will have working studio space and 24 hour access to this state of the art facility.

The Faculty and Recent Graduates
Graduate faculty members in art are all exhibiting and publishing artists who express a wide range of concepts, content, and media in their work. Recent faculty involvements have included public art commissions within the city of Milwaukee, Madison and Chicago, exhibitions locally and nationally including Los Angeles, Peru, and Manchester (UK), as well as visiting artist and speaking engagements throughout the United States. Our graduate students are strongly encouraged to interact and work within the community, and to explore multiple venues and audiences for their work. Recent graduate student successes include countless showings throughout the Milwaukee urban area, a prestigious Joan Mitchell Foundation grant, a prestigious International Sculpture Center's Outstanding Student Achievement in Contemporary Sculpture Award 2007, an exhibition winner in a New York gallery installation, participation in Art Chicago as well as The Stray Show, exhibitions in China, a feature article in Ceramics Art and Perception, and a feature article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's We Section.

We have active liaisons with the School of Architecture and Urban Planning, the Center for 21st Century Studies, the Center for International Education, the Center for Latin American Studies, the Film and Art History Departments and a host of community-based, not-for-profit cultural organizations. Along with our timely Visiting Artist and Scholar program, we offer a unique opportunity for working residencies at the Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, as well as various ongoing study abroad trips and programs, and various opportunities for focused international research, which have recently included trips to South America, China, Europe and a residency at the New Bauhaus Graduate Program in Public Art in Weimar, Germany.

The Visiting Artists, Curators and Scholars Program
The Department of Visual Art maintains an active and exciting Visiting Artist Program, which usually offers graduate students direct contact in the form of studio critiques, group discussions, brown bag seminars and public presentations. Artists and curators within the last two years include: David Wilson, Santiago Cucullu, Walid Raad, Joyce Scott, Kathryn Spence, Marianne Weems, Zoe Beloff, Faith Wilding, Gregory Sholette, Nato Thompson, Jane Simon, Siah Armajani, Christiane Paul, Liz Bachhuber, Sheba Chhachhi, Habib Kheradyar, Irit Rogoff, Zhang Zhaohui and Ma Youngfeng. Film, Modern Studies, the Center for International Education and the Center for 21st Century Studies also host countless renowned luminaries working in media, criticism and visual culture. There is also a constant stream of artists and critics that visit Milwaukee’s other institutions of visual culture. There is a wealth of opportunity within the UWM community to experience an impressive array of creative work, studio art, media-production, and critical and scholarly thought across disciplinary boundaries. Graduate students within the program are expected to take full advantage of this resource, and be a part of the intellectual and creative community beyond the studio doors.

For further information:
Denis Sargent, Director of Graduate Studies
414.229.6053
artgrado@uwm.edu
Art Building 255