MA Contemporary Art

New York City is home to the largest concentration of art galleries, auction houses, museums, foundations, art publications, and other visual arts organizations in the world.

The city’s financial resources, its cultural diversity, its vast networks of artists, collectors, and arts professionals are unsurpassed. These features make New York a key hub of the global art market and a vibrant and inspiring place to study contemporary art.

The MA in Contemporary Art combines the art historical study of art since 1960 with practical, real-life skills to prepare students for a career in this exciting and growing field. Located in the most important center of the art market, visits and focused travel augment lectures and seminars, taking the program outside the classroom to artist studios, galleries, museums, and private collections. The MA program prepares students for a wide range of careers in the art world, including ethical issues associated with contemporary art; it also cultivates communication and connoisseurship skills necessary to study and evaluate objects, and to engage directly with the marketplace. Students gain knowledge of a wide array of contemporary art including painting, sculpture, photography, and time-based media, as well as digital and ephemeral work. They also analyze methods of display and issues around the curation and collection of art.

The MA Contemporary Art student is an independent thinker, has strong observation and communication skills, and is aware of the latest developments in contemporary art and culture. Our typical student is dynamic, entrepreneurial, and eager to work on both academic and practical levels, combining academic rigor in the discipline of contemporary art history with market knowledge of current trends and developments in the international art world.