About Why Art School?

Learn to

  • Create new, original and authentic art;
  • See the world more thoughtfully, thoroughly and from different perspectives;
  • Give and take feedback regularly through the critique and review processes;
  • Use your heart, head and hands and BE ALL IN;
  • Be intense, work extremely hard and learn to use inputs in order to have outputs;
  • Be brave and take risks and learn from your full range of experience;
  • Innovate, improvise, collaborate, persist and execute with excellence;
  • Synthesize and work within and across multiple art areas;
  • Use a wide range of tools, computer software and understand process;
  • Develop different models of artistic practice to make a living as an artist;
  • Use symbols as visual language and bring attention to the unnoticed;
  • Be a creative problem solver and entrepreneur where the community is the new studio and you build lifelong relationships inside and outside of MECA&D;
  • Embrace foundation and the history of art;
  • Create the cutting edge of society pressing/creating positive cultural change while exposing contradictions and hypocrisy;
  • Dig deeply into art as a major or ultimate intellectual frontier;
  • Express yourself visually, interpersonally and in written form;
  • Be an Artist at Work and transform yourself while learning self confidence and humility;
  • Be a public intellectual, build communities and make them better;
  • Make art for art’s sake. Make art for life’s sake.

Resources & References

Robinson, Sir Ken
2010. Changing Education Paradigms.

Bryant, Adam
2012. “Take the Bus, and Watch the New Ideas Flow.” The New York Times, September 15, 2012.

Pink, Daniel H.
2006. A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future. New York: Riverhead Books.

Friedman, Thomas L.
2007. The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Picador.

Battenfield, Jackie
2009. The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love. Philadelphia: DA CAPO Press.

White, Kim
2011. 101 Things to Learn in Art School. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Madoff, Henry
2009. Art School (Propositions For The 21st Century). Cambridge: MIT Press.

Florida, Richard
2010. Rise of the Creative Class. Cambridge: Basic Books.

Lehrer, Jonah
2012. Imagine: How Creativity Works. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Snowdon, Graham
2010. “What to do with a degree in fine art,” The Guardian. May 21, 2010.

Tepper, Steven
2013. “Is An MFA The New MBA?” Fast Times: March 28, 2013.

De Botton, Alain
2013. “Art for Life’s Sake,” The Wall Street Journal: November 3, 2013.

Sawyer, Keith
2013. Zig Zag: The Surprising Path to Greater Creativity. New York: Wiley.

Kaufman, Scott Barry
2013. Ungifted, Intelligence Redefined: The Truth About Talent, Practice, Creativity, and the Many Paths to Greatness. New York: Basic Books.