Low Residency Master of Fine Arts, Provincetown MA

MassArt’s low-residency MFA Program at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (MFAWC) provides a unique opportunity for a select group of artists seeking the optimum low-residency program. This program’s emphasis is on studio production, on structuring interactions and environments where artists can create their work and receive critical feedback. While in Provincetown, students meet with and engage leading artists and art world professionals. MFAWC’s location in Provincetown at the tip of Cape Cod is one that has inspired artists for generations, and the Work Center’s studios and facilities have housed artists for over eighty years. Clearly a central part of this program’s attraction is the close proximity of the Work Center to a remarkable landscape and this program’s remove from the distractions of everyday life.

MFAWC seeks self-directed artists who want to capitalize upon their past achievements and to receive in-depth feedback. The intensive 3-week residency sessions are complemented by off-site periods where participants work under the supervision of approved mentors. The intensity of the residency sessions and off-site periods requires a high degree of discipline and a commitment to one’s work. While in Provincetown, students are expected to work seven days a week in order to maximize their productivity and to benefit fully from their interactions with others.

In today’s art world, where the line is often blurred between two-dimensional practice and other fields, it is common to see artists who are nominally painters creating installations and/or using a wide array of materials. It is this program’s expectation that a similar range of practice will be pursued, that artists may draw, paint, print, make photographs, create installations and work with assorted materials both in and outside their studios. Our intent is to support traditional and non-traditional two-dimensional practice and provide artists with the opportunity to develop their work without constraints. While a range of investigations is encouraged, please note that this program does not have the studios or facilities necessary for heavy fabrication.

Founded in 1873, MassArt has been offering a Master of Fine Arts degree for thirty years. In Boston, its state-of-the-art, city-block facility is located beside the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts. The full-residency, fine arts MFA Program in Boston lasts two years and attracts students from leading colleges and art schools throughout the US and overseas. Students can work in assorted disciplines or across media with an accomplished group of resident faculty and visiting artists. The MFAWC Program in Provincetown, MassArt’s only off-site MFA program, focuses on two-dimensional practice and will admit students beginning in September 2005. In September 2007, the program’s first cohort will complete their MFAWC requirements by installing a Thesis Show in the Provincetown Art Association and Museum and participating in a successful Thesis Review.

The Fine Arts Work Center was founded in 1968 by concerned artists, writers and patrons, including Stanley Kunitz, Alan Dugan, Robert Motherwell and Hudson Walker. The plan was to encourage younger artists and writers in the early “emerging” stage of their careers, by providing seven months of uninterrupted time to live and work in Provincetown, devoted exclusively to their art in a community of like-minded peers.

To date, FAWC has provided support for over 700 writers and visual artists. Work Center Fellows have gone on to win the most prestigious prizes in arts and letters, making a profound contribution to, and impact on, contemporary art and literature. Fellows are in residence from October 1 to April 30 and are chosen from a pool of more than 1,200 applications from around the world.

Additionally, more than 1,000 artists and writers participate annually in FAWC’s Summer and Fall Workshop Programs which offer week-long and weekend classes in visual arts and creative writing. More than 10,000 people attend FAWC’s year-round schedule of readings, lectures, exhibitions and public events. MFAWC builds on the Work Center’s strengths and its notable history and tradition. Participants will have access to a wealth of FAWC resources including large, airy studios, printmaking shop, darkroom, gallery, and lecture hall.

This curling finger of sand jutting into the sea at the tip of Cape Cod has beckoned artists and writers for over a century. "A man may stand there and put all America behind him," wrote Henry David Thoreau in 1865.

Today, much has changed, yet Provincetown remains a unique community, a haven for those seeking the creative impetus of a place where art and literature thrive away from the dulling routines of the conventional world.

Provincetown is the oldest continuous art colony in the country. Through the decades, thousands of artists and writers have made Provincetown their home and muse. The narrow and vibrant streets offer a cosmopolitan mix of people, restaurants, galleries and shops. The entire town, built mostly as a nineteenth century whaling village, lends itself to contemplative thought and artistic pursuits. The Harbor is busy with fishing vessels, recreational boats and whale watch tours. Provincetown is surrounded by the Cape Cod National Seashore: endless miles of dunes and ocean beaches, complete with bike trails and kaleidoscopic sunsets. And everywhere is the Provincetown light—an inspiration to generations of artists.

The MassArt/FAWC residencies are conducted in May and September, the months some say are the best to be in Provincetown. Without the large crowds, the hectic pace of summer slows, and the town offers all of its services to make a residency productive. Provincetown is easily accessible by car (Route 6) or boat, bus or plane from Boston.

All classes and studios will be at FAWC. Student and faculty housing will be available in local guest houses and inns.

:: Faculty

Resident Faculty
The Major Studio and Graduate Seminar classes comprise the core of each residency session and are staffed by four faculty members who conduct these classes in September and May of each academic year. The faculty rotate on a regular basis to ensure that a diverse and ever-changing range of critical and aesthetic perspectives are represented. The Major Studio advisors are an accomplished group of artist/educators with active careers as exhibiting artists and success as resident or visiting faculty. The Graduate Seminar coordinators similarly possess diverse backgrounds as authors, critics, theoreticians, and curators—individuals who can address the assorted connections between theory, art history, and studio practice. These individuals, in concert with the visiting faculty, replicate the diversity and changing nature of our contemporary art world. The faculty are chosen for their knowledge of and commitment to contemporary practice and for their desire to engage others in serious discussion.

Visiting Faculty
In each residency session, three visiting artists interact with the students over separate two-day periods, and three additional critics, curators, or theorists each attend a Graduate Seminar meeting. In combination, these interactions provide students with exposure to two non-resident faculty per week, complementing the twice-weekly interactions with resident faculty. Taken together, these interactions replicate the diversity and richness of the contemporary art scene.

The MassArt Graduate Program and the The Fine Arts Work Center have worked with many leading artists, critics, curators and other art world professionals in recent years. Listed here are some of the individuals who have made presentations and interacted with our programs’ participants in the past.

Amy Arbus Gregory Amenoff Benny Andrews Luis Cruz Azaceta William Bailey Debra Bricker Balken Gerry Bergstein Linda Besemer Jake Berthot Chris Burden Sophie Calle Petah Coyne Ellen Driscoll Carroll Dunham Carlos Estevez Raphael Ferrer Janet Fish Tom Friedman Ellen Gallagher Robert Gober Julie Heffernan Jim Hodges Nancy Holt Jon Imber Joel Janowitz Yvonne Jacquette Bill Jensen Roberto Juarez Alex Katz Mel Kendrick Peik Larsen Altred Leslie

Annette Lemieux Anne Wilson Lloyd Brice Marden Daniel Joseph Martinez Michael Mazur Elizabeth Murray   Thomas Nozkowski Sheila Pepe Jim Peters Judy Pfaff Larry Poons Richard Prince Martin Puryear Hanneline Røgeberg Nancy Rubins Sal Scarpitta Mira Schor Kiki Smith Joan Snyder Charles Spurrier Jessica Stockholder James Surls Roger Tibbetts Richard Tuttle Steven Westfall Jack Whitten Helen Miranda Wilson Terry Winters Tim Woodman John Yau Lisa Yuskavage

Faculty Bios

Debra Bricker Balken is an independent curator and writer with a focus on modern and contemporary art. Recent curatorial projects of hers have been created for the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Grey Art Gallery at New York University, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum. She has written numerous articles, essays, and reviews for Art in America ,Art Journal and New Art Examiner and catalogs for the Centre Pompidou, the Addison Gallery of American Art, and MIT’s List Visual Arts Center. In 2001, she published Philip Guston’s Poor Richard , and in 2007, expects to publish a book on Harold Rosenberg with the University of Chicago Press. She currently serves on the graduate faculty at RISD.

Joel Janowitz has exhibited extensively nationally. In 2003, he was included in "Visions and Revisions: Art on Paper Since 1960” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and "Selections from the Permanent Collection" at the Rose Museum, Brandeis University. In 2002, he had a solo exhibition of his paintings, watercolors, and prints at the Clark Gallery in Lincoln, MA. Joel’s work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and the Fogg Museum at Harvard. He has received fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Massachusetts Artists Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. He has taught at Princeton University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and currently at Wellesley College.

Educated at the U.S. Naval Academy and M.I.T., Jim Peters earned his MS in Nuclear Engineering in 1969. He began painting while serving on the aircraft carrier John F. Kennedy, and in 1977, received his MFA in painting from the Maryland Institute in Baltimore. He was awarded a Fellowship at the Fine Arts Work Center, and is currently the Chair of FAWC’s Visual Arts Committee. Jim has also been awarded three Massachusetts Individual Artists Grants and an Adolf and Esther Gottlieb Foundation Fellowship. Best known for his large mixed media figurative paintings and constructions, he exhibits his work at the CDS Gallery in New York, and the DNA Gallery in Provincetown. His work is also represented in many private and public collections, including the Guggenheim Museum in New York and Centro Cultural de Arte Contemporaneo in Mexico City.

Mira Schor is a painter and writer. She has exhibited her works in one-person exhibitions at the Horodner Romley Gallery in New York and in major group exhibitions including a number that explore the relationship between the written word and painting, such as: "Poetry Plastique" at Marianne Boesky Gallery in New York, "Drawing on Language" at Spaces in Cleveland, and "The Next Word" at the Neuberger Museum of Art. She is the author of Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture and co-editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists‚ Writings, Theory, and Criticism . She is the recipient of major awards including a NEA in Painting, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting and the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award in Art Criticism.

View Faculty Art Work

:: Courses

Residency Courses

Major Studio
This course meets for two days each week and provides the main forum for the discussion of student work. All students are required to attend these meetings or to be in their studios during class time. Each week a day-long interaction includes the participation of a visiting artist who meets with students and reviews their work.

Graduate Seminar
This course examines the relationship between theory and practice through interactions that promote in-depth discussions of contemporary artistic practice. Visits to contemporary venues where curators or participating artists discuss the work on exhibit and presentations by curators, critics, theorists, or contemporary practitioners promote an in-depth understanding of contemporary theory and practice.

Non-Residency Studio Courses

Independent Study (with Mentor)
This course is the primary studio component of the non-residency sessions in the first year of the MFAWC program. The focus of this Independent Study is to develop studio work that is critically informed and self-directed. Students are expected to respond to the criticism provided by their mentors at these meetings.

Thesis Preparation 1 and 11 (with Mentor)
Students work in an intensive fashion with a pre-approved mentor for the two second-year non-residency periods creating a body of focused work—a portion of which is included in the Thesis Exhibition.

Thesis Defense
The Thesis Defense constitutes the final review of the work produced in the MFAWC program. Students completing this program install their work during the first week of a third fall residency and participate in a review process during the second week. Informal discussions and formal reviews, in combination with the Thesis Exhibition, constitute the culmination of the MFAWC program. Resident and visiting faculty participate in this intensive process. The written Thesis Statement is submitted prior to this review process.

Non-Residency Critical Studies

The following classes will be conducted on-line.

Artists' Writings
Students submit written work and receive feedback from the instructor and classmates on-line. Submissions include artists’ statements, grant proposals, application letters to potential employers, letters of inquiry to galleries, essays, short stories, poems, and artist’s journals and notebooks kept while developing new projects.

Art After Modernism
A survey of the major artists, movements, criticism and theory in the visual arts from Minimalism to the 1990’s.

Benchmark on-line
This course focuses upon critical writings and their relationship to contemporary art practice. It builds a critical awareness of one’s own studio practice and that of one’s peers. In addition, it seeks to increase student understanding of varied responses to important contemporary events and exhibitions.

Thesis Document 1 & 11
These courses focus on the preparation of a written thesis document. Students work on an individual basis with the instructor and with their cohort to draft successive versions of this document. An initial Thesis Proposal and a review of one’s own work are completed prior to beginning work on the written Thesis.

:: Admissions

The Admissions Office at MassArt oversees the admissions process, answers questions concerning application requirements, and notifies applicants concerning their status.

Application deadline	March 15
Interviews	April
Letters of acceptance (& creation of Waiting List)	May 1
Deposits due	June 1
Application Fee	$75
Deposit (due upon acceptance)	$500

Application Requirements
The MFAWC Program uses the same application requirements and forms as MassArt’s full-residency MFA Program in Boston. Requirements include a transcript from a degree-awarding college(s), a statement of purpose, a resume, three letters of reference (with at least one being from a studio professor), and a portfolio of 20-30 slides of recent work. MFA candidates are expected to have completed a minimum of 6 credit hours of art or design history. Those who do not may be considered, but may be required to complete 6 credits minimum in art history prior to matriculation. Applicants whose first language is not English must present TOEFL scores of 233 (computer) or 577 (paper) or higher. Those with lower scores may be considered, but will be required to successfully complete an ESL course.

Applicant portfolios should document a sustained commitment to a core set of visual issues. These portfolios provide the most important information in determining whether a candidate is interviewed and eventually accepted.

Click here to download a Gradute Programs Application.

:: Frequently Asked Questions

Download a more in depth, text only catalog with FAQ here: PDF