Curriculum

Studio Art Curriculum

As an SMFA student, you won’t be required to complete a pre-set core year or declare a pre-set major. Instead, you’ll craft and carry out your own learning plan. Every medium you try and every class you take will help you identify your voice, your message, and your purpose.

Students at SMFA can dive as deeply as they like into a single medium or explore a range of disciplines in service of ambitious projects and individualized goals. Working directly with their academic advisors and faculty, students create a curriculum tailor-made to support them in their art practice while preparing them for their goals beyond school. We encourage our students to take advantage of full access to the courses, studios, faculty, and studio managers related to any of the following areas of study:

Click here to learn more about each area of study at SMFA, including course samples and faculty and student profiles.

Incorporating Liberal Arts

Interdisciplinary learning is a cornerstone of the Tufts education, and every student can take advantage of the breadth and depth of academic offerings of Tufts’ three schools: the School of Arts and Sciences, the School of Engineering, and SMFA. A Tufts education will offer you the flexibility to explore a wide range of ideas while encouraging you to connect them across disciplines, preparing you to be an effective problem-solver in an interconnected world. At SMFA, our educational philosophy is based in the idea that a broad and deep engagement with the liberal arts prepares our students to make artwork engaged with the contemporary world, build unique career pathways, and lead change in both industries and communities.

In addition to their studio art curriculum, students take several non-studio courses across a variety of distribution areas, including foreign language or culture, humanities, writing, social sciences, and science or technology. Whether you are a painter whose work is informed by political movements, a photographer interested in economic theory, or a papermaker who connects their practice to environmental studies, you’ll find the breadth and depth of courses to foster those ideas.