Washington University’s MFA in Visual Art Is Made for Renegades

Yoshiko Yap

Virtual Open House
On November 8, meet program faculty and take a 360° online tour of our spaces. The open house will begin at 9am (CST). The event is free; registration is required.

Plus, get your copy of Otherwise, the official MFA in Visual Art (MFA-VA) publication, and our new thesis exhibition catalogues!

About the MFA-VA Program
The Sam Fox School of Design & Visual ArtsMFA-VA program is an inclusive, close-knit community of renegade makers and thinkers. Drawing on the vast resources of Washington University in St. Louis, a tier-one research institution, the program offers students a site for rigorous inquiry, intellectual generosity, and professional preparedness. Our community instills students with the agency and resiliency essential for this generation of artists.

Learn about our new curriculum, program chair Professor Lisa Bulawsky, and our accomplished faculty mentors.

Facilities & Location
MFA-VA studios are located in Weil Hall, a brand-new, LEED-Platinum facility. Students have access to numerous specialized spaces for making, including a 3D digital fabrication lab, a textile studio, an expansive printmaking suite — home to Island Press and the Kranzberg Book Studio — and more. Studios are adjacent to the School’s Kranzberg Art & Architecture Library and the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, which recently hosted Ai Weiwei: Bare Life and is the site for the annual MFA-VA Thesis Exhibition.

We are proud of our location in St. Louis, which serves as an extension of the studio and a site of engagement for art and artists. Learn about our Office for Socially Engaged Practice and the cultural scene in St. Louis.

Core Faculty
In addition to program chair Lisa Bulawksy, our faculty members include Jamie Adams, Michael Byron, Amy Hauft, Meghan Kirkwood, Richard Krueger, Arny Nadler, Patricia Olynyk, Tim Portlock, Jack Risley, Denise Ward-Brown, Cheryl Wassenaar, and Monika Weiss.

Fall 2021 Visiting Artists & Critics
Jess T. Dugan, Meleko Mokgosi, Stephanie Syjuco, Taryn Simon and Ingrid Schaffner, Cole Lu, Hugo Crosthwaite, Deborah Roberts, and Adrian Octavius Walker.

Visit samfoxschool.wustl.edu to register for the Virtual Open House on November 8, 2021, and submit your application by January 15, 2022.

Contact graduate recruitment specialist Taylor Yocom at [email protected] for more information.

The show, which honors the 50th anniversary of an exhibition history once ignored, continues a series of projects documenting Wilmington’s contemporary art scene.


Renty and his daughter Delia. Renty was an enslaved African, kidnapped from the Congo, sold and forced into slave labor on the South Carolina plantation of B.F. Taylor


What is the relation between possessing a person, possessing their image, and dispossessing their progeny


The Adolph & Esther Gottlieb Foundation is accepting applications for its Individual Support Grants until January 14, 2022.


As a scholar of African American history and photography whose work has focused on the status of violent images in museums and archives, I fully support the validity of Ms. Tamara Lanier’s claim and the amicus brief.


Two K-12 art teachers will each receive a $1,000 cash gift and an additional $500 to put toward classroom art supplies. Nominations are due October 31.


The daguerreotypes of Renty Taylor, Delia, Drana, Alfred, Jack, George Fassena, and Jem  remained in an unused storage cabinet until 1975, when it was discovered by an employee of the Peabody Museum.


I am writing in support of the amicus curiae brief submitted by Professor Ariella Aïsha Azoulay of Brown University for the full restitution of the daguerreotypes of Renty Taylor and his daughter Delia, currently held by Harvard University, to their familial descendant, Tamara Lanier. 


We cannot be indifferent to the long-lasting effects of photography. The photographs at the center of Lanier v. Harvard are relentless in making Renty and Delia Taylor work and perform as slaves. The pain inflicted on them has not ceased. Photography has the capacity to propagate harm, and we have the moral obligation to interrupt…


Washington University’s MFA in Visual Art Is Made for Renegades

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