Program Overview

Grow as an artist and critical thinker as you refine and expand your skills and forge a path into the contemporary art world with the Master of Fine Arts in Painting in the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University. The two-year, 60-credit master's degree program is ranked among the top graduate programs by U.S. News & World Report, and is widely known for its rigor, superb instruction, mentorship, and the critical acclaim of its alumni and distinguished faculty of practicing artists and scholars.  

The Painting MFA program supports the development of a personal vision rooted in the history of art and conversation about painting as it is practiced among other art-making forms and visual culture. The breadth and interdisciplinary nature of the program’s approach is reinforced by exposure to practicing faculty in the school’s other studio and academic disciplines and its visiting artist and lecture series, such as Critical Dialogues and the Jack Wolgin and Margo Margolis Visiting Artist programs, which bring leading minds to Tyler to interact with graduate students. Second-year MFA student work is featured in an annual catalog and solo exhibitions, and there are ample opportunities for all MFA students to show their work throughout the academic year.

Students in the master's degree program have the unique opportunity to obtain in-depth, one-on-one access to a diversity of painters and thinkers, as well as a 2-1 faculty-student ratio. At the program’s core is an extremely supportive community of artists and scholars working collaboratively in studios, classrooms and beyond to engage critically in the problems and needs of our contemporary cultural environment. The MFA encompasses many different approaches to studio practice and, as part of an R1 research institution, this master's degree program is dedicated to creative making as research, pushing the canons and discourses of artistic production.

Graduate students take advantage of the school’s location in Philadelphia, a vibrant art center and affordable home base, to grow their creative practices. Graduates join an alumni community that includes highly accomplished and influential artists and teachers.