In Tyler’s MFA in Sculpture program, you’ll learn through a cross-disciplinary, exploratory approach to multidimensional artmaking that inspires experimentation and risk-taking. You’ll pursue a diverse range of creative pathways, including material and object-based practices, film and video, sound, performance, socially engaged art, large-scale architectural installation, research-based practices, digital fabrication and time-based media.
As an MFA candidate in Sculpture, you’ll be challenged to grow creatively, intellectually and emotionally through risk-taking, conceptual rigor, and technical proficiency. Faculty approach coursework through a student-centered lens, guiding you to build a deep and meaningful research practice as the framework for your extensive studio practice.
As a Tyler Sculpture MFA, you’ll explore how art operates as both personal expression and a means of understanding the self in relation to broader pressing social, cultural, and political contexts.
You will have the opportunity to work across diverse and limitless media including performance, video, robotics, puppetry, and digital fabrication—with practices deeply rooted in research.
The Tyler School of Art and Architecture features its own admissions team, who can provide you with the information you need to make the best decision for your educational and career goals.
The Sculpture program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture is a two-year, 60-credit program leading to the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree. It offers personal mentorship from faculty and visionary visiting artists in state-of-the-art facilities and encourages experimentation with media, interdisciplinary projects and public art to ignite social change.
The MFA in Sculpture is centered around four key principles that define our approach:
The MFA in Sculpture is deeply rooted in an expansive approach to research: written, aural, somatic, observational, historical, contemporary. You name it and we’re on board, and our faculty will support and challenge you through this dynamic process.
Sculpture exists at the nexus of the Venn diagram of contemporary art practice. There are no conceptual, material or technical boundaries. Our students move fluidly through ideas and media within and beyond the building. We welcome and nurture the performative and the experiential, installation and object, permanent and ephemeral, public and private—and all we have not yet imagined.
Tyler Sculpture is renowned as a close-knit and deeply supportive community of thinkers and makers. We know that we are, indeed, stronger together, and that our connections with community enrich all of us. Our generous private graduate studios are adjacent to impressive workshops and the BFA studios, fostering conversation, critique and collaboration.
Working in Tyler Sculpture means pursuing tough questions about the intersection of art and culture, and the ever-changing role of artists in our society. We believe in the power of art to change lives, share powerful stories, and uplift communities.
Tyler Sculpture MFA alumni are self-starters who are socially and culturally motivated.
They are curious, questioning, dedicated and hard-working thinkers and makers. They bring a broad and unique set of skills to anything they undertake and do so with deep commitment from beginning to end. Our alumni have gone on to become:
Tyler’s state of the art sculpture studios are housed in 16,000+ square feet of space that boasts dedicated metal, wood and mold-making shops, and a 1,000 square foot outdoor assembly pad. Each MFA candidate is assigned a generously sized private studio with 24-hour access to the facilities. Sculpture facilities include:
Meet some of the remarkable graduates of Tyler’s MFA in Sculpture. Our alumni are artists whose practices know no bounds—each forging their own path and shaping the future of contemporary art and culture.
MFA ‘21
Rachel Hsu is an interdisciplinary artist who works with visual art, language and poetry. Inspired by absence, relational ruptures, and slippages in translation, she engages the yearning that emerges from distance and displacement to make mental exertion and emotional endurance felt within one’s body.
Her work has been exhibited nationally, including Philadelphia and New York, and her writing has been published in Honey Literary. She holds an MFA in Sculpture from the Tyler School of Art and Architecture and a BFA sculpture from Western Washington University. Originally from Seattle, WA, she is currently based in Philadelphia, PA.
"Tyler’s collaborative, multidisciplinary curriculum fosters strong bonds between artists, relationships that have become the backbone of my post-MFA work. Fellow artists I met there have helped me experiment with new materials, develop new projects, and connect with professional opportunities."
The work of Tyler MFA candidates knows no conceptual, material or technical boundaries, encompassing analogue and digital, spanning all dimensions, and forging new paths for the field of sculpture and contemporary art in the 21st century.
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Tyler Sculpture faculty are actively exhibiting, award-winning artists with diverse approaches to their studio practices. This breadth and richness of experience makes them outstanding mentors.
