Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

The Pennsylvania Academy has been training America’s best artists for more than 200 years. Steeped in history, the Academy has a long list of famous alumni and a current faculty of working professional artists who form a continuous tradition of excellence in the studio arts of painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. Students at the Academy are passionate about their craft and their future as artists. The Academy teaches technique and imparts knowledge and skills to enable students to become the artists they want to be. The Academy is a unique community of working artists combined with a world-class collection of American art, located in one of the largest and liveliest art communities in the country.

The Academy offers a two-year Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) Program, a one-year Post-Baccalaureate Program, a four-year Certificate Program, and a coordinated Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) program with the University of Pennsylvania, with studio-based majors in painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture. Students work closely with a large faculty of resident and visiting artist-critics. The range of styles and approaches represented by both students and faculty members is diverse and supportive of the many directions in contemporary art making. Students at the Academy come from all walks of life, age groups, and widely varying backgrounds. This creates a high-energy community, bound together by a passion for making art and being artists.

The four-year Certificate Program is the most historic of the academic programs at the Pennsylvania Academy. In the first two years, students receive a thorough training in traditional and contemporary techniques of painting, drawing, sculpture, and printmaking. Under the mentorship of master artists, students take classes in cast drawing, life drawing and painting, anatomy, color, still life, figure modeling, perspective, etching, woodcut, and art history. In their second year, students choose to focus their study in the majors of drawing, painting, sculpture, or printmaking. Third- and fourth-year students receive private studios while continuing an intensive mentoring relationship with critics chosen from a large faculty of professional working artists who represent a wide range of aesthetic viewpoints.

The Certificate program emphasizes excellence in studio art–making skills and abilities, and drawing is emphasized at all levels of the curriculum. All students attend critiques and lectures given by visiting artists and critics and are in daily contact with the Academy’s outstanding collection of American art. At the conclusion of their studies, students mount a thesis exhibition within the galleries of the Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building.

Academy students can also obtain a Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) degree through the coordinated program with the University of Pennsylvania. For more than seventy years, Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania have cooperatively offered a unique educational combination of nationally renowned studio art training and Ivy League academics.

Students admitted to the B.F.A. program may begin studies at Penn after completing their first year of study at the Academy. This self-paced program offers students maximum flexibility in their academic pursuits.

The Master of Fine Arts (M.F.A.) program is an intensive, two-year studio art–making experience that involves daily interaction with an outstanding faculty of resident and visiting artists, regular private and group critiques, seminars in critical readings, a written thesis component, exposure to an outstanding visiting-artist program, and participation in graduate drawing and painting—reflecting the Pennsylvania Academy’s emphasis on achieving a high degree of skill in drawing and studio art–making practice. Students are expected to possess an unusually strong work ethic and to be highly productive and able to work independently.

The master’s degree program is centered in the studio arts of painting, drawing, printmaking, and sculpture, but within these disciplines, it displays considerable diversity in its approach. All students are provided a private studio in the new Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, with proper ventilation and 24-hour secure access to facilities.

During both years of study, every M.F.A. student must enroll in drawing and seminar classes that meet once a week at scheduled times. Students may also elect to take classes within the Academy’s Certificate Program, with its emphasis on working from life and the acquisition of traditional art-making skills. This, in conjunction with extensive access to the private studio, provides an open schedule that allows flexibility within the program. The Studio Critique system allows the student to choose three faculty critics from a large faculty representing a wide range of studio practice.

The Post-Baccalaureate Program is designed to address the needs of a wide range of students: those with an undergraduate degree who have substantial studio experience but need an additional year of studio work to develop a strong, cohesive, and competitive body of work; students requiring a year of intensive studio work prior to beginning a graduate-level program, or individuals with a degree in art who wish to pursue work in a different medium. It combines an advanced academic program of foundation and techniques with an upper-level, independent studio/critique system and seminars designed to develop personal vision through exposure to trends in contemporary art issues.

Application Procedures

Deadline--freshmen and transfers: March 1. Required: essay, high school transcript, college transcript(s) for transfer students, 2 letters of recommendation, portfolio, TOEFL score and affidavit of support for international applicants. Recommended: minimum 3.0 high school GPA, interview. Auditions held 1 time. Portfolio reviews held as needed on campus; the submission of slides may be substituted for portfolios for large works of art or when distance is prohibitive.

Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts

Application Procedures

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