Fine Arts
MASTER OF FINE ARTS
Redefine the limits of art through experimentation and rigorous practice.
The Corcoran Master of Fine Arts in Fine Arts attracts students who want to expand the material and intellectual dimensions of what they create. Our curriculum encourages a rigorous and experimental approach to art that motivates students to enhance their creativity in the studio and beyond. Within our program, students engage critical and creative relationships between content and form, investigate how art and history intersect, and study diverse contexts of creative production.
Students in our MFA program benefit from a dynamic community of peers, visiting artists, and knowledgeable faculty members. All students receive individual studio spaces where they can develop their artistic practice. Access to the George Washington University’s research resources allows students to enhance their practice with interdisciplinary considerations. Furthermore, Washington, D.C.’s abundant galleries and cultural events offer creative opportunities for students outside the classroom.
Read about our M.F.A. in Social Practice for artists and creative thinkers who want to connect art, public policy and collective action. Read about our M.A. in New Media Photojournalism.
INFORMATION SESSIONS
Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2023
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m. ET
Location: Online
Date: Wednesday, November 1, 2023
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m. ET
Location: Online
Date: Wednesday, January 17, 2024
Time: 7:00-8:00 p.m. ET
Location: Online
PROGRAM OF STUDY
The MFA in Fine Arts is a sixty credit program that takes approximately two years to complete. Contemporary art seminars with faculty and contact with visiting scholars, curators, and critics from local arts institutions will broaden your conceptual foundations and historical and imaginative horizons. At GW, the resources of both an internationally renowned urban research institution and an international arts hub are at your fingertips.
All media facilities including digital labs, photography and video facilities, and sculpture shops are available for realizing projects. Special arrangements can often be made to access facilities and resources in other departments within the University.
The program culminates with a thesis consisting of the execution of creative work and a critical statement about it. The thesis must be completed under the supervision of a thesis committee consisting of two full-time departmental faculty members. The thesis may be exhibited in Gallery 102.
Consortium Registration
If you wish to take limited classes beyond GW, you can register for courses at the other institutions belonging to the Washington Consortium of Universities. Any graduate student interested in these programs must consult with his/her departmental advisor prior to participation.
Work shown: Lionel Frazier White III (BFA in Fine Arts, 2018), in process.
ADMISSIONS
Applicants to the MFA in Fine Arts must follow the graduate application process, including submitting a required portfolio. You aren't required to submit GRE test scores. While you also aren't required to have a BA, BFA, or BS with a major related to studio art, it is recommended. A strong portfolio and statement can be combined with an academic background in another area. As with all graduate programs, you must have completed an undergraduate degree.
COSTS & FUNDING
The Program has a number of support packages that it offers to select students. Assistantships and fellowships are both awarded on merit.
The Student Accounts Office provides up to date cost information on our program. The program has a number of support packages that it offers to select students, and students are automatically considered as part of the application process. You may also find fellowships through the Office of Fellowships & Assistantships. The Office of Student Financial Assistance also has more information on aid opportunities.
OUR STUDENTS, PROFESSORS AND ALUMNI
Corcoran hosts NEXT at the end of every school year as a celebration of the art and scholarship of its students. Fine Arts M.F.A. students like Kevin Kwon (’21) explored important, and oftentimes personal, themes in order to create art around them: “My work is an exploration of being an immigrant living in the United States during the 21st century. In a broad sense, it is a visual reflection that depicts a sense of place, cultural identity and diaspora through abstract visual forms.”
Work shown: "Passport" from '0212202112' by Kevin Kwon
As a practice of undoing, repositioning, and rematerializing erasure of memory, experience, and environmental decay, Joey Enríquez (M.F.A. ’20) uses image-making and sculpture to unearth the effects of generational trauma. Joey now teaches at George Washington University. Learn more.
Photo: Chloe Brover '20.
Caroline Woolard’s practice focuses, at its heart, on collaboration, bringing seemingly disparate worlds together. Woolard was a visiting professor at the Corcoran from 2023-24. Read more in GW Today and the GW Hatchet.
Video by Nicholas Aguirre Zafiro ('25).
Sean Masao Nakazawa, MFA '18, had several solo and group shows in D.C. and at the Corcoran. He works in the city as an artist and adjunct professor in painting at Georgetown University.
Hadrian Mendoza's (MFA '18) "Bloom." Ceramic, Yarn, Dirt. From NEXT 2018
Nakeya Brown, a 2017 Snider Prize award winner, uses photography to explore the complexities of race, beauty politics and gender.
Students at the Corcoran have exhibited their thesis work for more than 30 years. In 2011, the exhibition came to be known as NEXT in a nod to the public seeing “what’s next” in contemporary art and scholarship. In 2023, NEXT evolved into a festival format to encompass the diversity of all the school’s programs and provide more public facing programming for the DC community. See examples from past classes’ culminating projects and work.
Image from MFA Exhibit Everything is Fine, 2023
CONTACTS
Campus Address
Flagg Building
500 17th St, NW
[email protected]
Program Information
Program Administrator
Emma Hunt
[email protected]
Program Head
Dean Kessmann
[email protected]
Advising
Director of Graduate Studies; Graduate Faculty Advisor for students pursuing an MFA in Fine Arts
James Sham
[email protected]