Sculpture is a discipline in motion, never static, continuously redefining itself. Find your voice. Feel engaged. Explore your greatest potential.
As a Tyler Sculpture student, you enter a lively community of innovative artists, thinkers and creators who engage in contemporary practice in many forms.
The BFA in Sculpture offers a flexible and forward-thinking education that reflects the evolving nature of contemporary art. Emphasizing experimentation, the curriculum supports the exploration of fundamental questions of purpose and meaning through hands-on methods.
Tyler offers an MFA in sculpture . Learn more about furthering your education here.
The sculpture program at the Tyler School of Art and Architecture at Temple University in Philadelphia provides opportunities to develop conceptual, material and technical skills across a variety of forms and media.
Thanks to the resources of both a renowned art school and a large, public university in a major East Coast city, you get access to exceptional mentors, spacious well-equipped studios, and tools that support everything from hands-on making to digital and virtual production for your research-based practice.
Make Tyler your hub for growth as a contemporary sculptor.
Sculpture gives you a powerful set of tools for your world view and expression. It’s a fortification, of sorts, where you gain greater strength, confidence and inspiration through your artistic practice and self-examination.
The natural exchange of ideas and meaningful collaborations inside our stand-alone art building make Tyler an exceptional place to earn your degree and develop your artistic voice. Everything starts with your first-year foundations program and continues through core coursework with peers from all the studio arts disciplines.
Within a collaborative and supportive community, you are encouraged to take creative risks, build technical skills, and engage in open dialogue—fostering both personal growth and shared artistic discovery.
Leverage the city of Philadelphia, too. As a longtime center for ideas and change-makers, the city gives you deep access to museums and galleries and a community full of internship and career options. Our location also makes it easy to connect with the vibrant art scenes throughout the northeast with quick trips to other major cities, including New York City and Washington, D.C.
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.
As a dynamic, contemporary art form, sculpture is an adaptive practice. It doesn’t dictate your work or your process. Let Tyler’s exceptional faculty — all working artists and researchers themselves — teach you to find and develop ideas and concepts and guide you to consider the medium and the form.
Use your curiosity and open heart to explore a diversity of mediums and techniques. Be open to all means of discovery that move your creative process forward and add context and action to your work.
Tyler teaches you a deep understanding of concepts, materials and technical applications that are the core of sculptural practice.
Object making
Socially engaged work
Video and lens-based media
Installation
Sound
Performance
Emerging technologies
Research-based practices
Digital and analog fabrication
Digital fabrication
Interdisciplinary projects
Public art practice
At Tyler, we encourage you to tap into the DIY ethos and self-reliance within our community of sculptors. At the same time, make the most of the generosity and collaborative spirit of your peers, faculty-mentors and workshop technical staff.
In other words, you can explore your own interests with our support as you develop your unique personal vision.
The sculpture area serves as a hub of community, thinking, making, action, care and collaboration. In addition to coursework and your studio art practice, plan on being involved.
Shared meals and conversations
Thoughtful gatherings and screenings
Supportive and challenging critiques and project experimentation
Through studio courses and field trips, Tyler gives you the chance to explore art-making strategies in real life, including what’s happening in your own community and in the world. You graduate prepared for entry into MFA programs or to begin a fulfilling and interesting career as a creative practitioner.
The Tyler School of Art and Architecture and the Fox School of Business Management collaborate to offer this undergraduate certificate in Creative Entrepreneurship for artists and other creatives who want to add business skills too.
This program prepares BFA students, with an approved course of study, to qualify for Pennsylvania Teaching Certification in Art, kindergarten through twelfth grade. Students must complete the BFA requirements along with 32 credit hours in education, art education, and specified liberal arts courses. Education-related studies begin in the sophomore year. Students generally take 5 years to fulfill all requirements or the 155 credit degree. All candidates for Pennsylvania Teaching Certificate in Art, K-12 must earn passing scores in the Praxis I and II National Teacher Examinations, Elementary Education: General Knowledge, and the Art Education Examinations.
Tyler gives undergraduates from a variety of majors the opportunity to enhance their education and career options through the exploration of visual storytelling and contemporary media. You study foundational skills in illustration, digital media and narrative techniques. It’s especially popular with students majoring in fine arts, communications, journalism or film, who want to integrate the power of illustration into their work.
When you earn your minor in illustration and emerging media, you boost your resumé and career competitiveness in fields spanning art, design, education, marketing and more. Few people know how to tell compelling stories through imagery. Plus, emerging media is increasingly valuable in today’s hyper-visual world.
Browse the list of popular classes in your academic rotation as you earn your BFA in sculpture at Tyler.
In addition to gaining technical fluency with a variety of methods and media, Tyler’s BFA degree teaches you transferable skills that build your professional confidence in any setting.
Graduates of Tyler’s BFA in sculpture degree program pursue a wide range of career options. Whatever path you choose, the Tyler emphasis on developing both your artistic voice and technical skills makes you a flexible, adaptable professional wherever your career takes you.
Tyler’s sculpture degree program reveals open borders for artistic expression so that pushing boundaries feels not only doable but expected, all within a supportive community of peers and mentors who will push you to make your best work. Our state-of-the-art spaces and facilities inside Tyler’s stand-alone building create a learning environment that mirrors life as a professional artist while you build your practices as an emerging artist.
Tyler devotes more than 16,000 square feet to sculpture program facilities and work areas. Thanks to plenty of natural light and a vast array of equipment and tools that range from hand tools like hammers to digital tools like a CNC router, you’ll feel inspired and challenged to do your best work yet, every time.
Tyler’s workshops feature full-time staff to help you plan your sculpture projects and use tools and equipment safely and effectively. In most cases, your course fees cover most of any materials costs.
Venture out of your studios with your sculpture classmates and other studio arts program peers to visit studios, galleries, exhibitions and events in Philadelphia and beyond.
Expand your view of yourself and the world. Feed your creative mind and heart by living and studying abroad. Tyler offers both summertime and academic-year overseas programs for you to explore the world — while meeting course requirements toward your degree.
See how your future classmates at Tyler use the studio spaces, workshops and exhibition spaces for cross pollination and hybrid projects of all sizes and media.
Daniel Cappello Student
Student
Ollie Goss Student
Alessandra Puglisi Student
Philip Andrew Crawford Student
Alessandra Puglisi Student
Student
Kyra Van Voorhees Student
Samuel Gleit Student
Dive deeper into the innovative projects and diverse talents of our students. Discover a wider range of creative work, from cutting-edge designs to thought-provoking concepts, and see how our Tyler creative's are shaping the world around them.
At Tyler, you join a community of classmates, alumni and faculty-mentors who contribute their influence and thought-leadership to your academic and studio art experiences. Let them explain the strength and benefits of earning your sculpture BFA here.
“My senior year of undergraduate at Tyler, I took senior thesis with Karyn Olivier. Our final assignment was a mock residency application to three programs, residencies and / or fellowships. Upon reviewing my application, she steered me towards greater opportunities and encouraged me to shoot for the stars. ‘Someday I want you to apply for Studio Museum in Harlem.’ Here I am, a proud alum of both Tyler and Studio Museum in Harlem.”
“The Tyler Sculpture program is a unique space to explore your passions with the unfettered tenacity of a practicing studio artist. It is the rare concentration where you are not just running simulations of being a tradesman but rather taking the driver's seat of your own fledgling career to discover both the technical and conceptual contours of your artistic practice. Along with hands-on skills in woodworking, metal fabrication and media production, this program fosters a challenging intellectual community where bold artistic vision is met with engaged critique by peers and faculty alike. This dialectical framework allows for young students, creating work reflecting our complex social and political worlds, to take risks of expression knowing that their ideas will be received with honest review and feedback to encourage their growth.”
“I am deeply thankful for the opportunities my time at Tyler has given me. Working at Temple Contemporary, engaging in fabrication, monitoring the sculpture studios, and meeting countless local artists seeking studio assistance has opened new avenues I’m excited to explore. The beginning classes available across the different studios, particularly the ones in sculpture, have equipped me with a diverse skill set that I think will make me a valuable asset wherever I go, as well as in my own artistic journey. From mold making to woodworking, welding, painting, ceramics and 3D modeling, I've truly become a jack of all trades. I will always appreciate the love and support we have in our sculpture community.”
“Tyler changed my life, it opened me up to different possibilities of experiencing the world, it allowed me to see that art was a method for change: for healing, communication and transformation. Tyler sculpture taught me that conversation, vibration and care are all sculpture, and change is ours to shape… Since graduating I have had the honor of continuing to share my process with the sculpture students of Tyler, countless letters of recommendation and the friendships that I cherish with faculty and students. The more I explore other art school environments the more I recognize how unique Tyler is and how much care and consideration is part of forming such a powerful community of thinkers.”
At Tyler, you get to work side-by-side with faculty members — all practicing artists themselves. Committed to giving you abundant and continuous access to their support and mentorship, your professors push you to develop your unique artistic voice and processes. Meet your professors and learn more about their areas of expertise.
Read the latest news from our inspiring community of working artists / faculty, current students and successful alumni.
Join our online community and follow along with our Instagram posts. See photos and learn more about what’s happening in sculpture at Tyler.
In addition to Tyler’s specialized admissions team, you’re welcome to contact the sculpture program leadership.
Photo by Joseph V. Labolito
Assistant Professor and Program Head of Sculpture of Director of Graduate Studies
