One of the fundamental natures of the MFA Fine Arts program is that it is an essentialization of the art world, a distillation of the dynamics of the art community in which artists—both faculty and students—function as professionals. The principal thrust of the program’s structure is to encourage students to make consummate work and to enhance their sensibilities and achievements in order that they might engage their skills and their artistic individuality in the system of galleries, museums and collectors.

Like some other schools, we accentuate the primacy of craftsmanship and proficiency. However, we accentuate more incisively the compelling development of self-expression and the realization of the innate creative spirit. We also accentuate the need for explorative experimentation that can induce students to discover new aspects of their creative abilities.

These goals are effected in close relationship between faculty and students, a relationship that fosters an ideology of stylistic pluralism and a diversity of artistic persuasions. The only dictamina ordained in the program are those that galvanize the students to produce as much as they can and to follow a personal course of intellectual and expressive evolution.

The faculty stands among the most prestigious in the art world. They are internationally celebrated artists whose works are highlighted in the most noteworthy public and private collections and in the most distinguished galleries. Leaders and innovators, they constitute an encompassing spectrum of taste, styles and philosophies. Also, the MFA Fine Arts program possesses a visiting artists program, a series of lectures and studio critiques delivered by predominant figures of the art world: artists, critics, curators and others involved in cognate areas of the art community.

Like the faculty, the students embody a richness of variety in their artistic endeavors and aesthetic directions. A premier group of individuals with high levels of accomplishment, they come from many different countries and reflect a plenitude of different experiences. In their resolute commitment to art as a profession, they also provide a significantly edifying environment to one another. The College provides for them during their two-year tenure in the program a host of different sites to showcase their work. They not only have the opportunity to display their talents in its numerous galleries, but many also have the opportunity to display their work in New York City’s galleries.

New York City is, in fact, a vital source of cultural fervor and a fountainhead of inspiration to the students, with its nonpareil wealth of artists, museums and galleries. The College itself occupies one of the most productive and prepossessing sections of the City—Chelsea, a hotbed of artistic activity. Thus, the students of the SVA MFA Fine Arts program are an international community of artists producing, creating and living in the larger community of the international art world of New York City, a community of both their present and their future.