Visual & Critical Studies
saic.edu/mavcs
This innovative program integrates making, researching, and analyzing artwork in a transdisciplinary environment that emphasizes investigation and invention. Students pursue scholarly, studio*, and hybrid research practices as they explore ways of seeing and representing social, cultural, and visual phenomena in the 21st century.
Thinking and making
The program is based on a core framework combining visual theory and immersive research with the production of writing, artwork, or both. The flexible curriculum balances topic-based seminars, independent work with faculty advisors, and electives with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary exploration.
Personalized structure
Guided by advisors, students design their own course structure to match their interests, combining artistic and critical practices, allowing for the final thesis to be a creative body of work that prioritizes writing and/or making. Students organize an annual symposium and exhibition to share their research in a professional context, critiqued by artists, curators, and scholars.
Renowned faculty
Department faculty are internationally recognized artists, designers, critics, writers, and scholars who share a common interest in taking disciplinary knowledge beyond the boundaries of conventional practice. Their backgrounds are diverse, including sound and performance, critical race studies and anthropology, mass culture and gender/sexuality studies, disability theory, photography and social history, conceptual practices and textual criticism, and a range of emerging disciplines. Faculty members have won Guggenheim awards for both studio practice and critical scholarship.
*Studio space is limited and based on availability.
