A low residency MFA is the modern way to obtain your graduate fine arts degree while balancing the demands of work, your personal life, and engagement in an artistic community. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) offers a low residency MFA with inherent flexibility for a self-directed or non-traditional approach.
The Low-Res MFA Fine Print
SAIC’s low-res MFA is a three-year program whose specifics reflect the needs of dynamic artists and writers on the go. The program helps artists strengthen existing skill sets while developing radically new skill sets through targeted, intense engagement around contemporary theories and issues.
During the low-res program, artist-students experience instruction over several platforms intended to encourage virtual and tangible worlds of thinking in communities where the artist creates and lives.
Curriculum focuses on writing and the study of artists’ writings while conducting research. Spring and fall semesters entail remote work in your home studio aided by an SAIC alumni advisor who resides within geographical proximity to you.
You spend three consecutive summer residencies on the SAIC campus with your peers, constructing and critiquing art. Each summer is broken into six-week intensives involving studio and classroom symposia and courses.
SAIC Low Residency MFA Learning Objectives
The aim of your work in the low-res MFA program is the creation of methods useful to productive, generative artwork. The program allows you to devise and hone these methods through collaborative endeavors alongside world renowned historians, curators, critics, artists and writers.
Close pairing with an alumni mentor as well as feedback from faculty and advisors exposes you, your worldview and your sensibilities to a wide array of antithetical, contending and/or juxtaposed positions regarding art’s function, production, and exhibition.
Lastly, the low-res MFA program grants you access to the SAIC’s cutting edge facilities and resources. Visit SAIC.edu today to examine a preview of what the School of the Art Institute of Chicago low-res MFA program has to offer.
