2025-2026 Graduate Catalog
Art
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Associate Professor Melanie Clemmons, Claire Morris Spaht Chair
Professors: Brian Molanphy, Philip Van Keuren
Associate Professors: Melanie Clemmons, Nishiki Sugawara-Beda
Assistant Professors: Emily Budd, Frederico Câmara, Daniel Rodriguez
Assistant Professor of Practice: Martha Poggioli
Visiting Professors of Practice: Dana Buzzee, David Challier, Kerry Maguire
Facilities for the study of art include specialized studios, individual workspaces, and equipment to support all media taught, as well as individual experimentation. Facilities include woodshop, metal shop, foundry, ceramics studio, painting and drawing studios, darkroom and digital photography large format printers, a Mac computer lab, and digital fabrication tools. Additional facilities include the Jordan Student Gallery and the Doolin Gallery for the installation of student artwork in Owen Arts Center, as well as the Pollock Gallery, the primary public exhibition venue of the Division of Art located in Expressway Tower. The Pollock Gallery provides students, faculty, staff and the surrounding community with opportunities to experience a wide and thought-provoking array of exhibitions representing diverse artists, time periods and cultures, as well as the B.A./B.F.A. and M.F.A. qualifying exhibitions. The division runs an extensive visiting artist program, ranging from visiting artist lectures and workshops to Pollock Gallery exhibitions. Through these programs, artists, critics and curators of note are brought to campus to teach, exhibit, and make artwork. The Meadows School and SMU offer excellent library resources, including the Hamon Arts Library.
The Division of Art will provide every graduate student with an individual or shared studio. It is the responsibility of each student to make full and proper use of the studio provided or lose the privilege. The division has no obligation to provide studios for longer than two years.
The Dallas/Fort Worth area has a large artistic community with rich and varied resources. These include many internationally and nationally significant museums and contemporary exhibition spaces: SMU’s Meadows Museum, the Dallas Museum of Art, the Nasher Sculpture Center, the Crow Museum, the Green Family Art Foundation, the Power Station, the Warehouse, the Latino Cultural Center of Dallas, the Dallas Contemporary, the Kimbell Art Museum, the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, and the Amon Carter Museum. There are also artist-run cooperative galleries and an established and growing commercial gallery system.
The M.F.A. program is a two-year residential program of study. Graduate students are admitted into the M.F.A. program in the spring for studies starting in the fall term. Candidates for the program must complete the online application available at http://www.smu.edu/Meadows/Admissions/Graduate. Additionally, candidates must upload a portfolio, including 18-20 selections of their work, to Slate. Portfolio submissions are due by February 1. Students are encouraged, but not required, to tour the facility with a current graduate student and to meet the Director of Graduate Studies (DGS) and other faculty prior to application. Admission to the graduate program is selective. Only those individuals will be admitted in whom the faculty recognizes clear prospects for attaining the objectives of the program during the two-year period of graduate study. Admission also is based on the objectives and limitations of the division.
The applicant is required to have a B.F.A. degree or equivalent to that offered at SMU (i.e., 60 studio hours, 12 art history hours). Highly qualified applicants not holding this degree may be considered for admission. The ranked admission criteria are portfolio, statement of intent, transcript and recommendations.
In general, not more than six credit hours of transfer credit apply to the M.F.A. in art. However, if the applicant has an M.A. in studio art, up to 30 credit hours may be transferred to the SMU program with the approval of the faculty and the head of the graduate program. In any case, a minimum of 36 hours must be taken at SMU.
Each year up to six Meadows Scholarships are reserved for incoming graduate students, awarded based upon artistic merit. These awards are for up to full tuition and fees remission and include teaching assistant stipends of $5,000 per academic year. A number of other grant programs offer significant funding for projects, materials and travel in support of creative research.
Aside from receiving a scholarship, students can apply for the following travel and scholarship opportunities: Meadows Travel Grant, Doolin Grant, Zelle Grant, Jones Grant and Moody Graduate Student Travel Grant.
With the approval of the graduate committee, in consultation with the faculty, each student will participate in the M.F.A. Qualifying Exhibition (MFAQE). The M.F.A. Qualifying Exhibition is a group show of all graduate student candidates in their final semester. Approval to exhibit must be obtained in the term prior to the exhibition. This approval usually is given after the critique at the end of the prior fall term.
The quality of this exhibition will be the primary determinant of whether the M.F.A. degree will be granted.
During the period of the graduate exhibition, the entire faculty will interview each student. This examination is to establish that the students’ creative work is of sufficient maturity and that their general knowledge of critical and historical issues is at the level expected of an M.F.A. candidate. Students are also expected to present an oral defense of their work, a slide presentation in the form of a professional artist lecture, a written thesis, as well as the following: an artist statement, 20 images with image list of work produced during the graduate program, a current curriculum vitae, and a PDF of the MFA Qualifying Exhibition brochure. This information should be presented in digital format. Students may not graduate unless this information is accepted to SMU Scholar.
If the faculty finds the oral presentation or written thesis to be unsatisfactory, students will have the option for a single retake within 10 days of the first review. Students will not be eligible to receive their degree after a second failure. Once the exhibition and the faculty examination are accepted and the required materials are turned in, students will receive their degree at the graduation ceremony at the end of the term.
Meadows School of the Arts is entitled to retain as many as one piece of work by each student. The intention is to honor the successful candidate and to provide evidence of student success in lieu of the usual formal thesis. These works enter the University art collection.
With the exception of the graduate seminar, coursework in history/theory/criticism, and studio elective, graduate study proceeds primarily through individual tutorials with members of the faculty, guided by a two-person graduate committee. Prior to the beginning of the first semester of study, the DGS will appoint, for each student, two members of faculty to serve as committee members (including the committee chair), a member of faculty for graduate studio “hours”, and a member of faculty for TA for the forthcoming semester. Graduate committees can change beginning with a student’s second or third term. Membership on the graduate committee becomes permanent at the beginning of the student’s second year except for substitutions for faculty who are on leave. Upon the return of a committee member who has been on leave, they will resume their place on the student’s committee.
This committee will meet with the student in critique at least once every month during each term in which they are registered for studio credit. These critiques are normally held the first week of each month, and it is the student’s responsibility to arrange these critiques.
At the middle and end of each term, a selection of completed and ongoing work and a written prose artist statement will be presented for review to the entire faculty of the division. Continuation in the graduate program is on a term-to-term basis and is determined by the graduate committee with the advice of the faculty at the review at the end of the term.
ProgramsMaster
CoursesArt-General
In registering for courses in art, the course number must be preceded by the appropriate subject code prefix for credit to be properly recorded. The ASAG sequence of seminars and independent study comprises the core of the graduate curriculum. Courses in individual disciplines, at or above the 5300 level, also are available for graduate credit.
Ceramics
Drawing
Photography
Printmaking
Painting
Sculpture
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