The MFA thesis project aims to involve students in the professional considerations of research and making artwork intended for exhibition. It constitutes a body of work intended to showcase the MFA candidate’s mastery of skills and personal vision. The Faculty Committee, in consultation with the individual student, selects one piece from that body of work for exhibition in the culminating MFA thesis exhibition.
Art historians, critics and noteworthy voices of the art world such as Donald Kuspit, Mia Feinman and Jerry Saltz, have contributed texts to accompany recent Thesis Exhibitions and Commencement Addresses. (To reproduce any part of these texts, please contact Peter Drake at the New York Academy of Art to obtain permission and proper credit information: 212.966.0300 x 970 / pdrake@nyaa.edu.)
Donald Kuspit, Some Dialectical Images 2011
Jenny Saville, Commencement Address 2011
Donald Kuspit, Tradition as Avant Garde 2010
Jerry Saltz, Commencement Address 2010
Margaret McCann, A Review of the NYAA’s End-of-Year Critiques 2009
Mia Feinman, Untitled 2008
Eric Fischl, Commencement Address 2008
Pier Consagra, “Wrong and Romantic” 2007
Vincent Desiderio, “Deus Ex Machina” 2005