Virtual Open House
On November 8, meet program faculty and take a 360° online tour of our spaces. The open house will begin at 9am (CST). The event is free; registration is required.
Plus, get your copy of Otherwise, the official MFA in Visual Art (MFA-VA) publication, and our new thesis exhibition catalogues!
About the MFA-VA Program
The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts’ MFA-VA program is an inclusive, close-knit community of renegade makers and thinkers. Drawing on the vast resources of Washington University in St. Louis, a tier-one research institution, the program offers students a site for rigorous inquiry, intellectual generosity, and professional preparedness. Our community instills students with the agency and resiliency essential for this generation of artists.
Learn about our new curriculum, program chair Professor Lisa Bulawsky, and our accomplished faculty mentors.
Facilities & Location
MFA-VA studios are located in Weil Hall, a brand-new, LEED-Platinum facility. Students have access to numerous specialized spaces for making, including a 3D digital fabrication lab, a textile studio, an expansive printmaking suite — home to Island Press and the Kranzberg Book Studio — and more. Studios are adjacent to the School’s Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, which recently hosted Ai Weiwei: Bare Life and is the site for the annual MFA-VA Thesis Exhibition.
We are proud of our location in St. Louis, which serves as an extension of the studio and a site of engagement for art and artists. Learn about our Office for Socially Engaged Practice and the cultural scene in St. Louis.
Core Faculty
In addition to program chair Lisa Bulawksy, our faculty members include Jamie Adams, Michael Byron, Amy Hauft, Meghan Kirkwood, Richard Krueger, Arny Nadler, Patricia Olynyk, Tim Portlock, Jack Risley, Denise Ward-Brown, Cheryl Wassenaar, and Monika Weiss.
Fall 2021 Visiting Artists & Critics
Jess T. Dugan, Meleko Mokgosi, Stephanie Syjuco, Taryn Simon and Ingrid Schaffner, Cole Lu, Hugo Crosthwaite, Deborah Roberts, and Adrian Octavius Walker.
Visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu to register for the Virtual Open House on November 8, 2021, and submit your application by January 15, 2022.
Contact graduate recruitment specialist Taylor Yocom at [email protected] for more information.
The Latest
Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa: An Endorsement of an Amicus Brief for Lanier v. Harvard
“Black infants in America are now more than twice as likely to die as white infants—11.3 per 1,000 black babies, compared with 4.9 per 1,000 white babies, according to the most recent government data—a racial disparity that is actually wider than in 1850, 15 years before the end of slavery, when most black women were…
Laura Wexler: An Endorsement of an Amicus Brief for Lanier v. Harvard
In 1850, when Dr. Robert W. Gibbes commissioned J. T. Zealy to make daguerreotypes of persons held in slavery in and around Columbia, South Carolina, for Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz to use in support of his theory that African people were a separate species, daguerreotypes were at the height of fashion.
The show, which honors the 50th anniversary of an exhibition history once ignored, continues a series of projects documenting Wilmington’s contemporary art scene.
he ownership of images has a long and nuanced legal history, which has evolved dramatically in recent years as cultural standards and photographic technologies have rapidly advanced
Renty and his daughter Delia. Renty was an enslaved African, kidnapped from the Congo, sold and forced into slave labor on the South Carolina plantation of B.F. Taylor
The Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation is accepting applications for its Individual Support Grants until January 14, 2022.
What is the relation between possessing a person, possessing their image, and dispossessing their progeny
Two K-12 art teachers will each receive a $1,000 cash gift and an additional $500 to put toward classroom art supplies. Nominations are due October 31.
As a scholar of African American history and photography whose work has focused on the status of violent images in museums and archives, I fully support the validity of Ms. Tamara Lanier’s claim and the amicus brief.
The daguerreotypes of Renty Taylor, Delia, Drana, Alfred, Jack, George Fassena, and Jem remained in an unused storage cabinet until 1975, when it was discovered by an employee of the Peabody Museum.
I am writing in support of the amicus curiae brief submitted by Professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay of Brown University for the full restitution of the daguerreotypes of Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia, currently held by Harvard University, to their familial descendant, Tamara Lanier.
Washington University’s MFA in Visual Art Is Made for Renegades