Master of Fine Arts in Visual Art
Master of Architecture
Master of Landscape Architecture
Master of Urban Design
Application deadline: January 15, 2013
Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts
Washington University in St. Louis
The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts is an interdisciplinary and diverse community of architects, artists, and designers dedicated to excellence in learning, creative activity, research, and exhibition. Our unique structure allows us to build on the strengths of each unit—Art, Architecture, and Museum—and to draw on the resources of the University to create new knowledge and address the social and environmental challenges of our time.
The Graduate School of Art offers a Master of Fine Arts—a two-year, critically engaged studio program that provides numerous opportunities for collaboration and both discipline-specific and non-disciplinary study. The program accommodates approximately 50 students to promote a vigorous exchange of ideas while maintaining a diverse and active community. Throughout the program, students are encouraged to investigate relationships between thinking and making, and to articulate the conceptual underpinnings of their work. Graduate seminars provide students opportunities to study theory through the lens of studio practice, while a robust thesis seminar supports students in their writing and in the development of their ideas. On a broader scale, the graduate program prepares students to understand the landscape of contemporary creative practices and consider the ways in which they can become involved in progressive social change, address challenges in the environment, and assume roles as global citizens through avenues such as public practice or study abroad programs. In furthering those objectives, the School offers collaborative research, production, and travel grants.
The Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design cultivates the designer’s identity as a leader: as both an expressive individual and a socially responsible citizen. Our commitment to the ethical practice of architecture, landscape architecture, and urban design spans disciplines, contending cultural theories, and the range of representational media. The School’s programs emphasize the physicality of design through regard for site, purpose, material, technique, and meaning. The School provides an intimate environment for learning, with one faculty member for every twelve students in design studios, and correspondingly small lectures and seminars. The independent character of a student’s abilities is demonstrated and tested in the final semester through the Degree Project, in which students work individually with faculty tutors and critics. The Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design also has a strong teaching and research assistant program, with approximately one out of four students engaged in this work. As part of the graduate architecture programs’ advanced curricula, students may enroll in semester-long studios and support courses in Buenos Aires; Helsinki, Finland; Seoul, South Korea; Shanghai; and Barcelona, depending on their program of study.
Visiting Artists, Architects, & Designers
Each semester, the Sam Fox School hosts weekly lectures by nationally and internationally recognized artists, architects, designers, landscape architects, urban designers, historians, and critics. In addition, various fellows programs and visiting critics promote new ideas in practice, theory, and technology in art, architecture, and design.
The Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum plays an integral role within the Sam Fox School. The Museum’s collection of more than 5,000 objects, focusing on European and American art of the 19th, 20th, and 21st centuries, is an extraordinary resource for students. The collection can be accessed through a comprehensive, searchable database. In addition, the Museum’s ambitious exhibition schedule brings nationally and internationally renowned artists and architects to campus, and documents their work through an award-winning publications program.
To learn more about our graduate programs and to access an online application click here.
