Program Overview

Cultivate a rigorous studio practice with the Master of Fine Arts in Fibers and Material Studies in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. This interdisciplinary two-year, 60-credit graduate program attracts students who interrogate materiality through a historic, social and political lens and define their work with fibers and materials broadly, often experimenting with sound, installation and performance.

With guidance from an influential and diverse faculty, Fibers and Material Studies Master of Fine Arts students work independently to augment a practice grounded in conceptual awareness of key discourses within the critical study of fibers and material.Discourses include

• Cultural appropriation,
• DIY and sustainability,
• Economy,
• Feminism,
• Globalization,
• Labor,
• Race,
• Queer studies and
• The historic role of women and people of color in textile production.

Explore your chosen discipline while broadly investigating a diversity of art-making practices. Spend extensive studio time in your core area of practice and engage with colleagues in weekly critiques and critical discourse within a boundary-pushing community that values a robust exchange of ideas. The Fibers and Material Studies MFA curriculum emphasizes mentorship, interdisciplinarity, inquiry and research to enrich practices and create theoretical, philosophical and concrete links between art and society.

Select a committee of advisors from disciplines across the university, working with them one on one to receive critical feedback. Students take art history classes and seminars that engage emerging topics in the field, the broader art world, and social and political inquiry.

Students can apply for teaching assistantships and participate in our artist-in-residence program. Under the mentorship of engaged faculty and visiting artists on the cutting-edge of creative practice and critical inquiry, students find a compassionate, inclusive environment primed for experimentation, interdisciplinary collaboration and independent study.