The Dual Degree: Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History and Arts Administrations & Policy is a three-year, 63-credit degree that provides students the ability to earn two synergistic degrees while maintaining the integrity and high standards of each degree.
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Art History, Theory, & Criticism
Arts Administrations & Policy
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Graduate Overview (Arts Administrations & Policy)
For Allison Glenn (Dual MA 2012), the art of curation is about collaboration. So, when she was asked to helm an exhibition in Louisville, Kentucky, honoring the life of Breonna Taylor, Glenn knew what she needed to do: listen.
The Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts Program is designed for the 21st-century artist whose work and life demands both a rigorous engagement with an artistic community as well as flexibility, fluidity, and a self-directed approach.
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Low-Residency Master of Fine Arts Program
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Even though SAIC is in the middle of the US, the School’s community still makes a major impact across the country and throughout the world. Take, for example, faculty member Hamza Walker, executive director of LAXART. “I am honored to be at the helm of one of L.A.’s premiere nonprofit spaces, to build on its legacy of supporting Los Angeles’s extraordinarily dynamic arts community, and to confront the challenges unique to alternative spaces,” Walker told Artforum.
Through an integrated approach to curriculum, practice and research, the Master of Arts in Arts Administration and Policy (MAAAP) program emphasizes collaboration, teamwork, and creative leadership. We are not a traditional arts administration program. As an academic program and a hub of creative activity, our approach views arts administration as a creative practice.
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Arts Administration and Policy
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As the director of the DePaul Art Museum in Chicago, Laura-Caroline de Lara (Dual MA 2012) brings the words and work of marginalized artists to the forefront.
The Master of Arts in Art Education (MAAE) program prepares artists, educators, designers, curators, teachers, organizers, activists, and other professionals seeking to be creative agents of change within a wide variety of cultural and educational contexts. The MAAE program focuses include social justice pedagogical practices; socially engaged art; collaborative practices, curriculum and project design for school, museum, and community settings; creative youth development; museum education; and design and environmental activism.
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Art Education
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Emily Calderon teaches art at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy. When the pandemic hit, she had to reimagine every lesson plan. “If anything, I’ve learned what really matters," she said. "And some days, I spend 30 minutes just listening to the kids. Life is happening outside of the classroom."
The Master of Arts in Art Therapy and Counseling program cultivates influential, compassionate leaders who are critically engaged with the social and cultural contexts surrounding artmaking and healing.
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Art Therapy and Counseling
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There was a time in Noel King’s (MA 2015) life when she thought she might be an art historian, photographer, or painter, disciplines she studied in high school. Then she pivoted in college and decided to major in psychology—which she loved—but something was still missing. Now, as a Deaf art therapist, King helps her patients explore their identity through creativity.
The Master of Arts in Modern and Contemporary Art History is a two-year, 36-credit masters program specializing in modern and contemporary art and design in international contexts. Two years of intensive study culminate in an original contribution to scholarship in the form of a master's thesis.
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Art History, Theory, & Criticism
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If you were to stroll through the parks that flank the perimeter of the Art Institute of Chicago, you’d see dozens of public artworks and monuments. Professor Mechtild Widrich notices and cares about all of them—and she thinks you should, too. Her book, Monumental Cares: Sites of History and Contemporary Art, follows case studies of monuments all over the globe, and implores readers to see and understand their significance.
The Master of Arts in Teaching program educates graduate students to become teachers of art, design, and visual culture while strengthening their own artmaking practices. The SAIC Art Education community supports students in becoming engaged and reflective teachers/artists whose pedagogical work fosters the emergence of more just and joyous individuals and societies. The program fulfills requirements to become a licensed PK-12 visual arts teacher in Illinois, and the coursework contributes to (and may meet) the teacher licensure requirements for other states and countries.
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Art Education
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Emily Calderon teaches art at Gwendolyn Brooks College Preparatory Academy. When the pandemic hit, she had to reimagine every lesson plan. “If anything, I’ve learned what really matters," she said. "And some days, I spend 30 minutes just listening to the kids. Life is happening outside of the classroom."
The Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies program integrates scholarly, studio, and hybrid research practices. It is designed for students who wish to pursue a scholarly and creative investigation of practices of looking and the production, circulation, and impact of visual images.
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Visual and Critical Studies
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Romi Crawford's research and courses explore areas of race and ethnicity as they relate to American visual culture (including art, film, and photography). She is co-author of The Wall of Respect: Public Art and Black Liberation in 1960s Chicago and was previously the curator and director of the Education Department at the Studio Museum in Harlem.
Students in the Master of Architecture program learn the history, theory, and technique of architectural design, developing the skills and experience necessary for professional practice and the critical thinking necessary to develop new ideas and drive invention and expand the discipline of architecture.
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Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
Historic Preservation
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Tizziana Baldenebro (MArch 2018) has built a newsmaking curatorial career, which is firmly grounded in social and environmental justice. In 2023, she is helming the United States Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architettura. The theme: Everlasting Plastics.
Students in the Master of Architecture program with a track in Interior Architecture gain all the expertise necessary for the practice of architecture while developing the sensibilities specific to the growing field of interior architecture.
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Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
Historic Preservation
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Tizziana Baldenebro (MArch 2018) has built a newsmaking curatorial career, which is firmly grounded in social and environmental justice. In 2023, she is helming the United States Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architettura. The theme: Everlasting Plastics.
The Master of Design in Designed Objects is a professional degree program with a structured curriculum that offers students the critical skills to imagine and create meaningful objects, systems, and experiences while challenging the boundaries of the field of design itself.
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Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
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Norman Teague (MDes 2016) is a Chicago-based designer and educator who focuses on projects and pedagogy that address the complexity of urbanism and the history of communities. He served as lead craftsman and co-founder of the Design Apprenticeship Program at the University of Chicago's Arts Incubator.
The Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Architecture program supports advanced work in architecture and its related fields that calls upon a broad range of art and design disciplines to challenge how architecture is defined and practiced.
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Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
Historic Preservation
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Tizziana Baldenebro (MArch 2018) has built a newsmaking curatorial career, which is firmly grounded in social and environmental justice. In 2023, she is helming the United States Pavilion at the 2023 Venice Biennale Architettura. The theme: Everlasting Plastics.
Art & Technology / Sound Practices (AT/SP) is a place to explore, critique, and imagine the potentials of artistic production with technology, sound, or their unlimited hybrid forms through focused study and interdisciplinary exploration. Students build their own individual course of study guided by expert faculty. They can take advantage of a fully interdisciplinary pedagogy through courses, advisers, and seminars, or they can take a focused approach to specific media, disciplines, or topics in the AT/SP ecosystem.
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Art & Technology / Sound Practices
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Lou Mallozzi is an artist working with a variety of strategies including sound, installation, performance, public intervention, drawing, and improvised music. He has performed and exhibited in the U.S. and Europe, including projects at the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Chicago Cultural Center, the Arts Club in Chicago, and the Italian Cultural Institute and Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. He is co-founder and director emeritus of Experimental Sound Studio.
Offering one of the few ceramics graduate programs that focuses on experimental, contemporary ceramics, both traditional and innovative processes and technologies are embraced. Students in the Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Ceramics program are encouraged to move fluidity across media, materials and methods to create bold work that subverts the ordinary.
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Ceramics
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Mie Kongo (BFA 2006) is an artist, a sculptor, and a professor, but above all, she is an observer. Fueled by a sense of curiosity and discovery, Kongo’s ceramics practice is rooted in exploring the nuance and subtleties of everyday life.
A display from The Sweetest 16, an exhibition at the John M. Flaxman Library celebrating Xerox Candy Bar's sixteenth anniversary.
SAIC's new Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Comics program offers a comprehensive, interdisciplinary, and innovative pathway for aspiring comic artists. Recognizing that developing narrative comics is a multi-faceted art form, the curriculum provides students with the opportunity to work across various disciplines, including painting, drawing, writing, reading, and narrative expression. Foundational Comics Seminars, combined with student-selected studio electives and faculty advisors, allow students to explore and experiment while developing their individual narrative voices and visual languages.
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Beth Hetland is the author of the graphic novel 'Tender,' published by Fantagraphics in 2024. She is the co-author of 'Half-Asleep' (Green Key Studios) and has produced a number of other zines and comics throughout her career. Hetland’s work has appeared in 'Publisher's Weekly,' 'Diabolique Magazine,' 'Voyage Chicago,' and 'High-Low Comics,' among others, and she is the recipient of multiple awards for both teaching and art, including a DCASE Grant from the City of Chicago and a Best in Show DiNKy Award from the Denver Indie Comics Expo.
The Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Design for Emerging Technologies program offers students resources in physical interface and interaction design, information architecture, physical computing, software-based optimization and analysis, and design for embedded control and robotic activation.
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Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
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To Wafaa Bilal (MFA 2003), how technology can illuminate human agency—or a lack thereof—is not new, or even controversial. His work uses video games, camera footage, and interactivity as conduits to illuminate how much power the West has, comparatively, if only they would stop and think about it. Crucial to his work is not only the scenarios it introduces; Bilal is also deeply concerned with how viewers respond to it.
The Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Designed Objects program is suited to design practitioners looking to advance, define, and reinvent their practice.
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Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
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Norman Teague (MDes 2016) is a Chicago-based designer and educator who focuses on projects and pedagogy that address the complexity of urbanism and the history of communities. He served as lead craftsman and co-founder of the Design Apprenticeship Program at the University of Chicago's Arts Incubator.
SAIC's groundbreaking Master of Fine Arts in Fashion, Body and Garment moves beyond the merging of fine art with fashion design to explore the body in motion, on show, in suspension, in conversation, and immersed in the world.
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Fashion Design
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Fashion Design Galleries
Nick Cave is an artist, educator, and foremost a messenger, working between the visual and performing arts through a wide range of mediums including sculpture, installation, video, sound and performance. Many might be surprised that an artist of Cave’s stature—his work has been celebrated and exhibited all over the world—is still teaching, but community has always been essential to his practice.
The Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Fiber & Material Studies program fosters experimentation across disciplines. Students explore cloth, print, and constructed textiles, as well as new media technologies, computer-assisted tools, sculpture, installation, and performance to make complex, cross-disciplinary work.
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Fiber & Material Studies
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Bryana Bibbs is the founder of The We Were Never Alone Project, a series of weaving workshops for survivors of domestic violence. During the workshop, Bibbs teaches participants a basic plain weave and gives them space to share their stories. She sees these workshops as part of a tradition of community spaces that have been centered around knitting.
Expanding the possibilities of moving-image is at the heart of our Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Film, Video, New Media, & Animation program. Students push boundaries while engaging in formal experimentation, technical innovation, and critical investigation in all forms of media-based work.
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Film, Video, New Media, & Animation
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Apichatpong Weerasethakul (MFA 1998, HON 2011) is a filmmaker who most recently won the Prix du Jury award for his film Memoria (2021) at the Cannes Film Festival. In previous years, Weerasethakul won the Prix du Jury for his film Tropical Malady (2004), the Prix Un Certain Regard for Blissfully Yours (2002), and the Palme d’Or for Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (2010).
Widely considered one of the most important studio programs in the country, the Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Painting & Drawing program promotes the development of new approaches that are redefining contemporary painting. Through studio production, critical discussion, and experimentation, students acquire the conceptual, material, and methodological tools to build a sustainable practice.
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Painting & Drawing
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“Painter” is the description that Angel Otero (BFA 2007, MFA 2009) identifies with most, but using that title has the unintended effect of singling him out. The artist’s compositions made of dried oil paint smash together colors, textures, and focal points—almost daring viewers to discern a hierarchy.
One of the only graduate-level contemporary live art programs in the country, our Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Performance program cultivates artists who produce experimental work that reflects radically changing concepts of the body, time-based art, social practice, new media technologies, and the social and cultural conditions of a mobile society.
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Performance
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To try to summarize Nyugen E. Smith’s (MFA 2016) oeuvre would be a fool’s errand. His work is too vast and too full; it spans every conceivable art form and is at once about the universal experience of being alive and the specific experience of being a first-generation American born to parents from Caribbean countries.
Considered one of the strongest in the country, SAIC’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Photography program is focused on investigating, understanding, and expanding upon traditional and experimental forms of image making, while nurturing students as emergent artists, intellectuals, and professionals.
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Photography
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Dawit Petros is a visual artist, researcher, and educator. His work is informed by studies of global modernisms, theories of diaspora, and postcolonial studies. His works have been recognized with awards including a Terra Foundation Research Fellow, an Art Matters Fellowship, and artist residencies at The Studio Museum in Harlem, Addis Ababa Photo Fest, and an Independent Study Fellowship at the Whitney Museum of American Art.
Our Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Printmedia program acknowledges traditional forms of the medium and actively encourages expanding the boundaries of contemporary print by promoting experimentation with materials, techniques and processes informed by research and critical thinking.
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Printmedia
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Ayanah Moor is a visual artist and educato. Her artwork is held in public and private collections, including the Capital Group (Los Angeles); DePaul Art Museum (Chicago); Soho House (London); Museum of Contemporary Photography (Chicago); Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art, University of Nevada (Las Vegas), and the David L. Lawrence Convention Center (Pittsburgh).
Our distinctive Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Sculpture program encourages experimentation while giving form to social, environmental, and theoretical concerns. Students are encouraged to embrace a wide variety of approaches—from casting bronze to organizing public spectacles, from growing food to digital fabrication.
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Sculpture
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Richard Hunt (BFA 1957, HON 1979) is considered one of Chicago’s most prolific and accomplished sculptors, and throughout his career he has made an enormous contribution to public art in the United States. In 1968, Hunt became the first Black visual artist to serve on the National Council of the Arts. In 1971, when he was just 35 years old, the MoMA celebrated Hunt with his first retrospective.
Students in the Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Visual Communication Design program explore the transformative power of design, as they develop their analytical skills, personal voice, and visual language. The program challenges students to actively engage the world and define their role as contributing designers working at the intersection of art, design, and mass culture.
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Visual Communication Design
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McKenzie Thompson (MFA 2014) is the founder of Outsider Supply, an e-commerce apparel brand informed by six years of living in Chicago. Combining streetwear with visual and textual references to art history once considered avant-garde, Thompson takes a minimalist approach to clothing that invites lookers and wearers alike to consider what these artists, movements, and ideas mean now.
The Master of Fine Arts in Writing (MFAW) welcomes writers of all genres—fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting—and visual artists who work with language as an integral component of their practice. The two-year program provides a rigorous yet flexible curriculum to challenge and accommodate individual explorations of process and form.
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Writing
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Jesse Ball is an American novelist. He is the author of more than 15 books and his work has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Ball has been named a National Endowment for the Arts, Guggenheim, and Creative Capital fellow.
SAIC’s dynamic Master of Science in Historic Preservation program prepares graduates to revitalize the built environment through the comprehensive exploration of science, history, creative arts, politics, and technology.
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Historic Preservation
Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects
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Tucked away in a quiet corner of the Art Institute of Chicago’s Ryerson and Burnham Libraries, Nicholas Lowe’s mind is racing, connecting every historical document to its source and every source to contextual details, drawing maps in his head about where the archived material is, where it came from, and where it’s going to go next. Lowe is searching for a story.