Visual Arts

(Formerly R1001) The fundamentals of visual vocabulary and handling of drawing materials including charcoal, compressed charcoal, pencil, pen, ink, and brushes. Various conceptual and practical approaches to image-making are explored as formal issues such as line, volume, contrast, and composition are emphasized.  Class assignments are accompanied by discussions and critiques.  Students draw largely from observation, working with a variety of sources that may include still-life objects and the human figure. Portfolio required at the end.  If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

New York City is our source of inspiration as we hone the fundamentals of visual vocabulary and handling of
drawing materials including charcoal, pencil, and ink with pen and brushes. The city’s natural setting, its social
and cultural history and urban-architectural structure inform our work as we explore various conceptual and
practical approaches to image-making as well as formal issues including line, volume, contrast, and
composition. In this time of remote learning, the experience of drawing on NYC for inspiration will be a way to
connect with the city whether you are physically in New York or not. Class assignments are accompanied by
discussions and critiques. Students draw from observation and imagination, working with a variety of sources
including still-life objects, photographs and other references.

Introductory course to analog photographic tools, techniques, and photo criticism. This class explores black & white, analog camera photography and darkroom processing and printing.  Areascovered include camera operations, black and white darkroom work, 8x10 print production, and critique. With an emphasis on the student’s own creative practice, this course will explore the basics of photography and its history through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, and readings. No prior photography experience is required.

Since Walter Benjamin’s concept of “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” (1935), photography has been continuously changed by mechanical, and then digital, means of image capture and processing. This class explores the history of the image, as a global phenomenon that accompanied industrialization, conflict, racial reckonings, and decolonization. Students will study case studies, read critical essays, and get hands-on training in capture, workflow, editing, output, and display formats using digital equipment (e.g., DSLR camera) and software (e.g., Lightroom, Photoshop, Scanning Software). Students will complete weekly assignments, a midterm project, and a final project based on research and shooting assignments. No Prerequisites and no equipment needed. All enrolled students will be able to check out Canon EOS 5D DSLR Camera; receive an Adobe Creative Cloud license; and get access to Large Format Print service.

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) Examines the potential of drawing as an expressive tool elaborating on the concepts and techniques presented in VIAR UN1001. Studio practice emphasizes individual attitudes toward drawing while acquiring knowledge and skills from historical and cultural precedents. Portfolio required at the end.

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) (Formerly R3201) Introduction of the fundamental skills and concepts involved in painting. Problems are structured to provide students with a knowledge of visual language along with a development of expressive content. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3130) This studio course will provide the students with a foundation in the ceramic process, its history, and its relevance to contemporary art making. The course is structured in two parts. The first centers on the fundamental and technical aspects of the material. Students will learn construction techniques, glazing and finishing methods, and particulars about firing procedures. This part of the course will move quickly in order to expose the students to a variety of ceramic processes. Weekly assignments, demonstrations, and lectures will be given. The second centers on the issue of how to integrate ceramics into the students current practice. Asking the question of why we use ceramics as a material and, further, why we choose the materials we do to make art. Rigorous group and individual critiques focusing on the above questions will be held. The goal of this course is to supply the students with the knowledge and skill necessary to work in ceramics and enough proficiency and understanding of the material to enable them to successfully incorporate it into their practice. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3330) The fundamentals of sculpture are investigated through a series of conceptual and technical projects. Three material processes are introduced, including wood, metal, and paster casting. Issues pertinent to contemporary sculpture are introduced through lectures, group critiques, discussions, and field trips that accompany class assignments. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3401) Enables the student to realize concepts and visual ideas in a printed form. Basic techniques are introduced and utilized: the history and development of the intaglio process; demonstrations and instruction in line etching, relief, and dry point. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R3413) Printmaking I: Silkscreen introduces silkscreen and other silkscreen techniques. Given the direct quality of the process, the class focuses on the students personal vision through experimentation with this print medium. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Advanced analog photography & darkroom printing. Students will work with analog cameras and learn how to refine black-and-white printing techniques, produce larger prints, etc. Emphasis will be placed on the editing, sequencing, and display of images while cultivating a theoretical and historical context to situate the work. Students will engage with an array of photographic practices through presentations, critiques, guest artist lectures and printing assignments. This course will explore critical issues in contemporary photography and advanced camera and production techniques through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, readings, and field trips. Prerequisites: Intro Darkroom Photography (Columbia) or equivalent experience

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) (Formerly R3515) This course approaches drawing as an experimental and expressive tool. Students will explore the boundaries between drawing and sculpture and will be encouraged to push the parameters of drawing. Collage, assemblage and photomontage will be used in combination with more traditional approaches to drawing. The class will explore the role of the imagination, improvisation, 3-dimensional forms, observation, memory, language, mapping, and text. Field trips to artists’ studios as well as critiques will play an important role in the course. The course will culminate in a final project in which each student will choose one or more of the themes explored during the semester and create a series of artworks. This course is often taught under the nomenclature Drawing II - Mixed Media.

Prerequisites: VIAR R1000. (Formerly R4005) Students will connect with the very heart of the Western Art tradition, engaging in this critical activity that was the pillar of draftsmanship training from the Renaissance on through the early Modern Era. This pursuit is the common thread that links artists from Michelangelo and Rubens to Van Gogh and Picasso. Rigorous studies will be executed from plaster casts of antique sculptures, and pedagogical engravings. Students will confront foundational issues of academic training; assessing proportion and tonal value, structure and form. Hours will be spent on a single drawing pushing to the highest degree of accuracy in order develop a means for looking at nature. There is a focus on precision and gaining a thorough understanding of the interaction between light and a surface. This approach emphasizes drawing by understanding the subject and the physical world that defines it. While this training has allowed great representational artists of the past to unlock the poetry from the world around them and continues to inspire a surging new realist movement, it can also serve as a new way of seeing and a launching point for achieving creative goals. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

When millions of images are made every day, how can a photographer create an original body of work? This class proposes that parsing humanity’s existing shared archive of images is more relevant than generating new images. Following models such as Nepal Picture Library, Magnum Foundation, Drik/Majority World, and Arab Image Foundation, contemporary photography has remapped its practice around the reimagining and explanation, of the archival object. This class explores many archives–family albums, historical photographs, government records, fragile maps, musical albums, and flea market collectibles. We will use a series of lens-based technologies, starting from the flatbed scanner and Photoshop retouching and radiating outward. We will explore archive concerns, including consent, ownership, privacy, circulation, respect, and political impact. Students will explore display forms, including slide shows, zines, books, and exhibitions. There will be a strong complement of reading and writing in this class around the theory and practice of archives from the Western North and Global South. 

Prerequisites: (VIAR UN1000) and (VIAR UN2100) Painting III:  Advanced study in painting will be a material inquiry into the consequential concepts, histories, and critical language embedded in making painting’s historical past and its’ present.  Is painting now a singular “medium”? How do facture, scale, form and a multitude of image-making options, regardless of “style”, accrue as to create meaning?  Participants are expected to present work weekly, as Individual studio or group critiques. These will be augmented by readings of selected historical essays and contemporaneous writings, as well as visual presentations on a rotating basis. 

Prerequisites: VIAR R1000 and VIAR R2100. (Formerly R3210) Course provides the experience of employing a wide range of figurative applications that serve as useful tools for the contemporary artist. Non-Western applications, icon painting, and the European/American traditions are presented. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

What does it mean to think materially? To use color? These are the questions that will guide this foundational course designed for painters, ranging from beginner to advanced, who want to develop their technique and material thought process.

We will begin with a focus on color, using the Albers method to learn first from experience, developing an eye for color, before we delve into color theory and color philosophy. The creative eye for color will aid us as we learn the ins and outs of acrylic painting, oil painting, the mediums, historical techniques, and associated theoretical concerns in how something is painted. Some of the class will be spent painting observationally, working on our ability to see creatively and translate experience into material. Many of the projects will be self-directed in subject or approach, whether you consider yourself a staunch realist or pure abstract artist, focusing mostly on the material language of the painting. Students can expect to cover the basics of a studio practice, such as stretching canvases, building a palette, developing a range of techniques, as well as gaining a critical eye for material decisions and how to realize their vision.

This course will focus on using ceramics as a primary art making machine by breaking out of the constraints wedded to this traditional material. Building on the foundation set in Ceramics I, this course will delve further into the technical and historical aspects of the ceramic process as well as conceptual ideas in art making. Students will use a self-directed working process to facilitate the incorporation of ceramic materials into their existing art making while allowing them room to go in their own conceptual direction. Rigorous group and individual critiques will be held on a regular basis. Content is a priority in this class, and with the further understanding of ceramic processes and materials, the goal is for the student to be fluid in producing their ideas without the obstruction of technical difficulties.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN2300 or the instructors permission. (Formerly R3331) Continuation of VIAR UN2300. The objective of the class is to engage in in-depth research and hands on studio projects related to a specific theme to be determined by each student. Each student is expected to complete class with four fully realized and thematically linked works. Wood, metal, and plaster will be provided for this class but video, sound, performance and various mixed media approaches are highly encouraged. In addition, lecture and field trips will be part of the course. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Prerequisites: VIAR R2300. (Formerly R3332) Sculpture III is an invitation for immersive sculpting. The class will explore the idea of experiences and construction of contexts as central research topics. The class becomes a laboratory space to explore various techniques to heighten body awareness and spatial sensibility. Through assignments and workshops, the students will practice how to digest these sensory experiences through their studio practice. Historical precedents for art outside the usual mediums and venues will be our reference points to investigate how our own work may take part in a generative process that evolves the definition of sculpture. The assignments in the first half of the semester point the students to performance, site specificity, and sound, that utilize New York Citys odd spots and professionals. While building such common experiential platforms, the class will also build language for a dialogic space, through weekly in-class discussions lead by the instructor, guests, and rotating panels of the students. As the semester progresses, the emphasis will gradually be shifted from experiential learning to intensive studio work on a final project, where the students are asked to pay close attention to how various methods and fields of subjects combine. The resulting project has to be the best work you have ever done. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN2420 (Formerly R3402) Continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in intaglio. Encourages students to think visually more in the character of the medium, and personal development is stressed. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

This course offers to the student who may find an examination of printmaking an asset to their art practice.
The course will cover several printmaking processes like relief, intaglio, silkscreen, and monotype. In addition, we will discuss printmaking concepts such as repetition, matrix, original/translation, reproducibility, and multiple considering the works produced in class.
We will involve a separate in-depth study of each process by alternating studio time, demonstrations, field trips, individual and group critiques.
Through the printmaking processes, students will explore assignments and projects and be encouraged to incorporate them into their own body of work.

Prerequisites: VIAR R2440. (Formerly R3414) Printmaking II: Silkscreen continues instruction and demonstration of further techniques in silkscreen. Encourages students to think visually more in the character of the medium, and personal development is stressed. Individual and group critiques. Portfolio required at end. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Intro to Moving Image: Video, Film & Art is an introductory class on the production and editing of digital video. Designed as an intensive hands-on production/post-production workshop, the apprehension of technical and aesthetic skills in shooting, sound and editing will be emphasized. Assignments are developed to allow students to deepen their familiarity with the language of the moving image medium. Over the course of the term, the class will explore the language and syntax of the moving image, including fiction, documentary and experimental approaches. Importance will be placed on the decision making behind the production of a work; why it was conceived of, shot, and edited in a certain way. Class time will be divided between technical workshops, viewing and discussing films and videos by independent producers/artists and discussing and critiquing students projects. Readings will be assigned on technical, aesthetic and theoretical issues. Only one section offered per semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

(Formerly R4601) New York City is the most abundant visual arts resource in the world. Visits to museums, galleries, and studios on a weekly basis. Students encounter a broad cross-section of art and are encouraged to develop ideas about what is seen. The seminar is led by a practicing artist and utilizes this perspective. Columbia College and General Studies Visual Arts Majors must take this class during their junior year. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Prerequisites: Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3900 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3901. Corequisites: VIAR UN3910 (Formerly R3901) Students must enroll in both semesters of the course (VIAR UN3900 and VIAR UN3901). The student is required to produce a significant body of work in which the ideas, method of investigation, and execution are determined by the student. A plan is developed in consultation with the faculty. Seminars; presentations. At the end, an exhibition or other public venue is presented for evaluation. Studio space is provided.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN3900 Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3900 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3901. Corequisites: VIAR UN3911 Students must enroll in both semesters of the course (VIAR UN3900 and VIAR UN3901). The student is required to produce a significant body of work in which the ideas, method of investigation, and execution are determined by the student. A plan is developed in consultation with the faculty. Seminars; presentations. At the end, an exhibition or other public venue is presented for evaluation. Studio space is provided.

Prerequisites: Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. VIAR UN3910 is the prerequisite for VIAR UN3911. Corequisites: VIAR UN3900 (Formerly R3921) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Prerequisites: VIAR UN3910 Department approval required. See requirements for a major in visual arts. Corequisites: VIAR UN3901 (Formerly R3922) Students are required to enroll in both semesters (VIAR UN3910 and VIAR UN3911). A second opinion is provided to the senior students regarding the development of their senior project. Critics consist of distinguished visitors and faculty. Issues regarding the premise, methodology, or presentation of the students ideas are discussed and evaluated on an ongoing basis.

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: the department chairs permission. (Formerly R3932)

Prerequisites: VIAR R2420, or VIAR R2430. (Formerly R3415) Designed for students who have already taken one semester of a printmaking course and are interested in continuing on an upper level. Students are encouraged to work in all areas, separate or combined, using their own vocabulary and imagery to create a body of work by the end of the semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

Advanced Moving Image: Video, Film, Art & Movement is an advanced moving image class which centers on the use of both established and emergent digital technologies as a medium for exploration and artistic expression. The focus will be on artworks that reference the body/bodies in movement, the creation of Avatars and the designing of environments and spatial narratives. Existing works from this emergent area will be shown to give cultural and historical context, seen through a personal and political lens. The course will be intensive and hands-on, the apprehension of technical and aesthetic skills will be utilized to create works based on the individual or collective expression of the artist/s.

Students are encouraged to explore areas of personal interest and to incorporate this research
into their production work. Taking an active role in class discussions and production teamwork is
required. The course is offered to both graduate and undergraduate students. It is expected that at the end of the course students will have gained an active knowledge of core concepts and techniques useful in working with performance capture within an art context.

What happens to a body stilled in space, when it takes a shape and holds it? How does its relationship to public space change? How is its transformation attenuated when the body is in formation with other bodies, a breathing still life of people and props? This performance art course will use the question of a body’s stillness as a platform to create interdisciplinary projects that exist between dance, sculpture, collaborative movement, and performance art. Through core readings and case study presentations, we will discuss unique possibilities of representation and challenges this form enables, and the prominent role it has been taking within the visual arts in recent years. Students will engage with a variety of aesthetic strategies and formal techniques such as movement workshops, sensory exercises, video, wearable sculptures, collaboration, scores, and group meditation. Studio work will focus on concrete intersections between the body and the object, and case studies chosen to encourage students to think of movement as a form of resistance, and to consider the political implication of collaborative work that unfolds over time. Performativity in the context of this class is widely defined, and no prior experience is required. 

This course will explore the photobook as a central medium of contemporary lens-based practice. Students are exposed to a variety of approaches and viewpoints through historical lectures, class trips, and presentations by guest photographers, curators, critics, editors, graphic designers, etc. Each student will propose, develop, and produce editioned books during this course. This course requires reading, independent research, and work outside of class time.

What does it mean to think materially? To use color? These are the questions that will guide this foundational course designed for painters, ranging from beginner to advanced, who want to develop their technique and material thought process.

We will begin with a focus on color, using the Albers method to learn first from experience, developing an eye for color, before we delve into color theory and color philosophy. The creative eye for color will aid us as we learn the ins and outs of acrylic painting, oil painting, the mediums, historical techniques, and associated theoretical concerns in how something is painted. Some of the class will be spent painting observationally, working on our ability to see creatively and translate experience into material. Many of the projects will be self-directed in subject or approach, whether you consider yourself a staunch realist or pure abstract artist, focusing mostly on the material language of the painting. Students can expect to cover the basics of a studio practice, such as stretching canvases, building a palette, developing a range of techniques, as well as gaining a critical eye for material decisions and how to realize their vision.

This course will focus on using ceramics as a primary art making machine by breaking out of the constraints wedded to this traditional material. Building on the foundation set in Ceramics1, this course will delve further into the technical and historical aspects of the ceramic process as well as into the conceptual ideas in artmaking.

Students will use a self-directed working process to facilitate the incorporation of ceramic materials into their existing art making while also being allowed room to go in their own conceptual direction. Rigorous group and individual critiques will be held on a regular basis.

Content is a priority in this class, along with the further understanding of ceramic processes and materials. The goal is for the student to be proficient in producing their ideas without the obstruction of technical difficulties.

This course offers to the student who may find an examination of printmaking an asset to their art practice.
The course will cover several printmaking processes like relief, intaglio, silkscreen, and monotype. In addition, we will discuss printmaking concepts such as repetition, matrix, original/translation, reproducibility, and multiple considering the works produced in class.
We will involve a separate in-depth study of each process by alternating studio time, demonstrations, field trips, individual and group critiques.
Through the printmaking processes, students will explore assignments and projects and be encouraged to incorporate them into their own body of work.

Intro to Moving Image: Video, Film & Art is an introductory class on the production and editing of digital video. Designed as an intensive hands-on production/post-production workshop, the apprehension of technical and aesthetic skills in shooting, sound and editing will be emphasized. Assignments are developed to allow students to deepen their familiarity with the language of the moving image medium. Over the course of the term, the class will explore the language and syntax of the moving image, including fiction, documentary and experimental approaches. Importance will be placed on the decision making behind the production of a work; why it was conceived of, shot, and edited in a certain way. Class time will be divided between technical workshops, viewing and discussing films and videos by independent producers/artists and discussing and critiquing students projects. Readings will be assigned on technical, aesthetic and theoretical issues. Only one section offered per semester. If the class is full, please visit http://arts.columbia.edu/undergraduate-visual-arts-program.

When millions of images are made every day, how can a photographer create an original body of work? This class proposes that parsing humanity’s existing shared archive of images is more relevant than generating new images. Following models such as Nepal Picture Library, Magnum Foundation, Drik/Majority World, and Arab Image Foundation, contemporary photography has remapped its practice around the reimagining and explanation, of the archival object. This class explores many archives–family albums, historical photographs, government records, fragile maps, musical albums, and flea market collectibles. We will use a series of lens-based technologies, starting from the flatbed scanner and Photoshop retouching and radiating outward. We will explore archive concerns, including consent, ownership, privacy, circulation, respect, and political impact. Students will explore display forms, including slide shows, zines, books, and exhibitions. There will be a strong complement of reading and writing in this class around the theory and practice of archives from the Western North and Global South. 

Introductory course to analog photographic tools, techniques, and photo criticism. This class explores black & white, analog camera photography and darkroom processing and printing.  Areascovered include camera operations, black and white darkroom work, 8x10 print production, and critique. With an emphasis on the student’s own creative practice, this course will explore the basics of photography and its history through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, and readings. No prior photography experience is required.

Since Walter Benjamin’s concept of “work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction” (1935), photography has been continuously changed by mechanical, and then digital, means of image capture and processing. This class explores the history of the image, as a global phenomenon that accompanied industrialization, conflict, racial reckonings, and decolonization. Students will study case studies, read critical essays, and get hands-on training in capture, workflow, editing, output, and display formats using digital equipment (e.g., DSLR camera) and software (e.g., Lightroom, Photoshop, Scanning Software). Students will complete weekly assignments, a midterm project, and a final project based on research and shooting assignments. No Prerequisites and no equipment needed. All enrolled students will be able to check out Canon EOS 5D DSLR Camera; receive an Adobe Creative Cloud license; and get access to Large Format Print service.

Advanced analog photography & darkroom printing. Students will work with analog cameras and learn how to refine black-and-white printing techniques, produce larger prints, etc. Emphasis will be placed on the editing, sequencing, and display of images while cultivating a theoretical and historical context to situate the work. Students will engage with an array of photographic practices through presentations, critiques, guest artist lectures and printing assignments. This course will explore critical issues in contemporary photography and advanced camera and production techniques through regular shooting assignments, demonstrations, critique, lectures, readings, and field trips. Prerequisites: Intro Darkroom Photography (Columbia) or equivalent experience

This required Visual Arts core MFA curriculum course, comprising two parts, allows MFA students to deeply engage with and learn directly from a wide variety of working artists who visit the program each year.

Lecture Series
The lecture component, taught by an adjunct faculty member with a background in art history and/or curatorial studies, consists of lectures and individual studio visits by visiting artists and critics over the course of the academic year. The series is programmed by a panel of graduate Visual Arts students under the professor's close guidance. Invitations are extended to artists whose practice reflects the interests, mediums, and working methods of MFA students and the program. Weekly readings assigned by the professor provide context for upcoming visitors. Other course assignments include researching and preparing introductions and discussion questions for each of the visitors. Undergraduate students enrolled in Visual Arts courses are encouraged to attend and graduate students in Columbia's Department of Art History are also invited. Following each class-period the conversation continues informally at a reception for the visitor. Studio visits with Visual Arts MFA students take place on or around the week of the artist or critic's lecture and are coordinated and assigned by lottery by the professor.

Artist Mentorship
The Artist-Mentor component allows a close and focused relationship to form between a core group of ten to fifteen students and their mentor. Students are assigned two mentors who they meet with each semester in two separate one-week workshops. The content of each workshop varies according to the Mentors’ areas of expertise and the needs of the students. Mentor weeks can include individual critiques, group critiques, studio visits, visits to galleries, other artist's studios, museums, special site visits, readings, and writing workshops. Here are a few descriptions from recent mentors:
• During Mentor Week we will individually and collectively examine our assumptions and notions about art. What shapes our needs and expectations as artists and the impact of what we do?
• Our week will include visits to exhibition spaces to observe how the public engages the art. Throughout, we will consider art's ability to have real life consequences and the public's desire to personally engage with and experience art without mediation.
• The week will be conducted in two parts, first with in-depth individual studio visits and then all together as a mobile discussion group.
• As makers of things, the wide spectrum of our histories, emotions, and social experiences are among the intangibles we work from and give form to. How do “things” become "materialities?"
• What are the most viable forms of art practice in the 21st century? Why? How do we distinguish between the performance of knowledge and the ecstasy of experience?

This required Visual Arts core MFA curriculum course, comprising two parts, allows MFA students to deeply engage with and learn directly from a wide variety of working artists who visit the program each year.

Lecture Series
The lecture component, taught by an adjunct faculty member with a background in art history and/or curatorial studies, consists of lectures and individual studio visits by visiting artists and critics over the course of the academic year. The series is programmed by a panel of graduate Visual Arts students under the professor's close guidance. Invitations are extended to artists whose practice reflects the interests, mediums, and working methods of MFA students and the program. Weekly readings assigned by the professor provide context for upcoming visitors. Other course assignments include researching and preparing introductions and discussion questions for each of the visitors. Undergraduate students enrolled in Visual Arts courses are encouraged to attend and graduate students in Columbia's Department of Art History are also invited. Following each class-period the conversation continues informally at a reception for the visitor. Studio visits with Visual Arts MFA students take place on or around the week of the artist or critic's lecture and are coordinated and assigned by lottery by the professor.

Artist Mentorship
The Artist-Mentor component allows a close and focused relationship to form between a core group of ten to fifteen students and their mentor. Students are assigned two mentors who they meet with each semester in two separate one-week workshops. The content of each workshop varies according to the Mentors’ areas of expertise and the needs of the students. Mentor weeks can include individual critiques, group critiques, studio visits, visits to galleries, other artist's studios, museums, special site visits, readings, and writing workshops. Here are a few descriptions from recent mentors:
• During Mentor Week we will individually and collectively examine our assumptions and notions about art. What shapes our needs and expectations as artists and the impact of what we do?
• Our week will include visits to exhibition spaces to observe how the public engages the art. Throughout, we will consider art's ability to have real life consequences and the public's desire to personally engage with and experience art without mediation.
• The week will be conducted in two parts, first with in-depth individual studio visits and then all together as a mobile discussion group.
• As makers of things, the wide spectrum of our histories, emotions, and social experiences are among the intangibles we work from and give form to. How do “things” become "materialities?"
• What are the most viable forms of art practice in the 21st century? Why? How do we distinguish between the performance of knowledge and the ecstasy of experience?

Students meet with the professor and pave the transition from graduate students to seeing themselves as artists with a long term working creative perspective beyond academia. The professor will work to contextualize the students body of work in the arena of an international art conversation. VISUAL ART LAB will be led by Sarah Sze in the Spring.

Schedule:
Priority will be given to all second-year students who submit a short presentation of their work. Should there be remaining room for first year students they will be admitted upon review. To apply please submit a brief description of work, current research and interest in taking the seminar, along with 5 - 10 images. There will be one half hour meeting for each student with professor Sze throughout the Spring Semester.

Requirements:
Rigorous development of students' own body of work.

Kind Radiance: Photography & Ethics
Graduate Seminar in Photo & Related Media

From its early days, Photography has been surrounded by questions of ethics. Anthropology in particular has struggled with its earlier history as a companion to Colonial conquest. How else to understand the ethnographer’s photo documentation of brutality enacted in the Congo, or the supposedly “neutral” cataloguing of Bedouin women that was setting up an image database for control. During the British rule of India, image merged with biometrics, developing the world’s first “criminal” fingerprint measurement method. More contemporary debates about exploitation have placed the venerable Magnum Photo Agency into turmoil, while questions of appropriation follow contemporary art figures such as Richard Prince, and are satirized by collectives such as New Red Order. Photographers during war have faced different questions, about whether documenting atrocities is enough, or whether the image maker also needs to intervene. Appropriately, the title of this class is an inversion of Susie Linfield’s Cruel Radiance: Photography and Political Violence (2010). We hope to reach an optimistic inversion of Linfield’s sources of worry, and your own artistic and writing process will be the starting points for questions around ethics, appropriation, agency, witnessing, and permission. We will be reading contemporary theory and narratives, as we experiment with reading others images, and making our own.

“Our violence towards the Earth springs from, and is modeled on, our violence towards other human beings.” — Amitav Ghosh in conversation with Lucia Pietroiusti, Guggenheim Museum, February 5, 2022

Many contemporary artists are trying to find sustainable and equitable ways of operating in a global economy hellbent on growth no matter the cost, including extinction. If, as Earth inhabitants in the Anthropocene, we are all contributing to the current climate crisis, we can also be among the millions of solutions needed. In this class, we will expand our climate awareness and process our climate grief by learning lessons from non-human entities, Indigenous teachings and traditions, and current legal actions and grassroots activism against extractivism and the legacies of conquest, imperialism, and settler colonialism. In hopes for a more livable earth, Ben Okri’s concept of “existential creativity,” Amitav Ghosh’s call for a return to animist storytelling, Four Arrows’ goal for mainstream education to adopt Indigenous worldviews, and recent art that proposes the possibility of a regenerative future will be our guides.

A variety of media and content will be covered including the work of Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Artists Commit, Richard Bell, Octavia Butler, Rachel Carson, Meehan Crist, Ben Davis, Torkwase Dyson, Extinction Rebellion, Carolyn Finney, Fridays for Future, Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Amitav Ghosh, Linda Goode Bryant, The Harrison Studio, Katharine Hayhoe, Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, Yun Ko-eun, Bill McKibben, Gustav Metzger, Timothy Morton, Darcia Narvaez, The Natural History Museum, Ben Okri, Lucia Pietroiusti, Kim Stanley Robinson, Mary Robinson, Astra Taylor, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Wahinkpe Topa (Four Arrows) aka Donald Trent Jacobs, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Elvia Wilk, Isabel Wilkerson, and Tyson Yunkaporta. Class guests and field trips will include artists and thinkers working on the precipice of climate education, action, healing, and justice.