17 MA Programs in Fine Arts Studies in North America for 2024

Offered by the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University, the Master of Fine Arts in Studio Art is a rigorous interdisciplinary program that prepares graduate students for a career as professional artists grounded in artistic innovation and creativity.

The MA in Fine Arts can be completed with an emphasis in Drawing and Painting. This degree program provides students with the creative and technical skills needed to thrive in today’s art world. Students will leave with professional-level portfolios and an understanding of the business of art.

Laguna College of Art + Design’s Game Design MFA seeks to advance the art, science, and culture of play by creating a context for advanced study and innovative work. LCAD’s Game Design MFA is an online 2-year terminal Masters of Fine Arts (MFA) degree that allows you to explore the design and development of games as a creative practice. The program offers a unique, multidisciplinary approach that bridges the gap between theory and practice in game design. The Game Design MFA online curriculum is centered on the processes of both the creation and the development of games. The program acknowledges that games are responsible for providing much more than mere entertainment; they also are meaningful products of a thriving global economy that illuminate truths about our world, our societies, and ourselves. LCAD’s Game Design MFA is structured in such a way that will empower you with both the knowledge base and the skill sets to ensure that your own meaningful game design enterprises are economically impactful and sustainable. Our Game Design program will develop your creative skills and enhance your potential as a game designer, developer, and entrepreneur. Select program candidates will create a graduate-level game development environment, replicating that which reflects the current industry model, nurturing advanced skills in design, research, and development, leadership, and marketing in the creative art of game design.

SFAI’s two-year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program provides a dynamic interdisciplinary context for students to advance their work while being exposed to the current theoretical and sociopolitical context for contemporary art. Questions, dialogue, and invention drive students through the curriculum, which instructs in the skills and practices needed to sustain a lifelong practice in the arts. The concept is emphasized alongside technical proficiency and skill, and artists are encouraged to experiment widely across media. Students may choose an area of emphasis, or maintain breadth in their studies.

Maximize your critical and artistic development through a rigorous, multidisciplinary studio practice. In a close-knit community of peers, faculty, and visiting artists, your practice will evolve in exciting new directions. Mills offers a master of fine arts (MFA) degree in studio art led by a distinguished faculty of internationally known artists.

The MA in Studio Art is offered as part of the Art MFA in Studio Art program. Applicants who are interested in pursuing an MA in Studio Art must apply to the Art MFA program.

The Master of Arts (M.A.) in Studio Art is a 30 credit hour, two-year program for artists. Students complete 15 credit hours of graduate-level coursework in various studio art areas such as graphic design, drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, ceramics, and sculpture (3D studies).

Moore’s Socially Engaged Arts degree programs bring together artists and organizers in the same space to critically and pragmatically engage in the discourses and practices concerned with art’s relationship to place, collaboration, ethics, material, and interdisciplinary research.

The Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing is a limited-enrollment, academically rigorous, low residency two-year course of graduate studies for those aspiring to recover a faithful, theologically rich approach to the creative arts, particularly writing.

The MFA program offers six areas of specialization: Ceramics, Interdisciplinary Studio, New Genres, Painting and Drawing, Photography, and Sculpture. These studio areas are supplemented by seminars and lectures in contemporary critical theory. The program emphasizes the development of a sustained artistic practice through exploration, experimentation, and intensive studio work and study. Opportunities to investigate areas beyond one's concentration are made available.

The core of Laguna College of Art + Design’s MFA program in Painting is built on the values of time-honored skills informed by contemporary theory and designed to help you realize the ideas possible through representational modes of painting and drawing. Our curriculum recognizes that there are particularly technical, ideational, and formal issues related to representation that require you to undergo specialized study at the graduate level, and we strive to meet these demands with a faculty and a curriculum tailored to your needs. The primary goal of the MFA program in Painting is to support you in building on the traditional skills you acquired in your undergraduate studies so that you may realize ideas possible in the discipline of representational art. You will achieve this goal through the creation of a coherent body of work, a written thesis, and a thesis exhibition. Additionally, you will gain insights into the presentation and marketing of your work and will be educated in the logistics of teaching art at the college level.

The specialization in Studio Art is interdisciplinary, students can focus on one specific area of focus or expand into other areas of research. Students choosing a specific focus area may still take courses across studio disciplines, but “InterMedia” is intended to be an integrated focus that combines two or more broad disciplines, including: Art & Social Engagement Ceramics Digital Fabrication and Design Digital Studio Practice Fibers InterMedia (integrated/mixed media and installation) Jewelry & Metalsmithing Painting & Drawing Photography Print & Narrative Forms Sculpture The program is structured to ensure a broad and balanced integration of media, processes, and concerns allowing a rich combination of tradition and innovation. Engagement with disciplines outside of Art & Design and within the local, national, and international community is also encouraged, expected, and supported. The hallmark of the department is its commitment to diverse ideas and approaches to art that foster an experimental attitude in keeping with contemporary art practice.

The MFA Design Program is a five-term 56-unit studio-based program that is designed to support the development of a personal contemporary practice that is both unique and sustainable. Students work closely with USC Roski's internationally acclaimed design faculty, as well as an expanded community of leading professional designers, artists, historians, critics, curators, and culture makers who participate in regular Visiting Designer/Designer-in-Residence Forums. The scope of the program will provide graduate design students with a critical examination of the issues, theories, and ideas that are relevant to contemporary design and studio practice in design, with a focus on the following objectives: Increase your ability to analyze graphic design (along with architecture, fashion, art, and other cultural production) including describing them with appropriate vocabulary, examining their formal elements, and engaging in research to understand their contexts (both contemporary and historical);

UVA’s unique 2-year Master of Fine Arts program allows students to customize their course of study, linked to their individual career goals. Students are encouraged to experiment both inside and outside of their discipline, and engage in rigorous conceptual research in order to make the most well-informed and impactful artwork.

Tyler’s Fibers & Material Studies program embraces a bold, interdisciplinary approach to one of the world’s oldest and most accessible traditions: working with fibers. Students are pushed to refine their aesthetic, collaborate, embrace a broad definition of material exploration and contribute to vital discussions on history, identity, current social issues and more. Through dynamic events and projects such as the annual Wearable Art Show and the Natural Dye Garden (the source of the marigolds above), Tyler Fibers & Material Studies students create exciting conversations with artists and students throughout the school, Temple University and Philadelphia, home to a vibrant fibers community and DIY scene.