<p>If you are going to be in the Los Angeles area this weekend you might want to drop by the UCLA MFA open house. Everyone is invited Saturday 12/4 from 6-9:00 PM.</p>
<p>Here's a link with more info:
Daily</a> Bruin :: Graduate Open Studios to feature student art pieces in Warner Building</p>
<p>Do you know much about UCLA’s MFA program in sculpture? How many students are in the program?</p>
<p>Studiomom,</p>
<p>I know a little bit about the UCLA-Art school in general and some of the specialities but my knowledge on their sculpture department is weak. Here’s what I know and hopefully some of these links will give you better info…</p>
<p>Who
When I think of MFA programs my first thoughts go toward who exactly is giving the instruction? These programs tend to be tiny and very one-on-one so its imperative to know who the professors are, will I fit in that method of study, and do I like the results that are produced by that set of professors.</p>
<p>In the case of UCLA-Arts Sculpture your professors would be headlined by Hirsch Perlman and you can see the bios here:
[UCLA</a> Department of Art | Sculpture](<a href=“http://www.art.ucla.edu/sculpture/pages/faculty_staff.html]UCLA”>http://www.art.ucla.edu/sculpture/pages/faculty_staff.html)
Perlman is very highly regarded in the art world, just do some Googleing and you’ll see why.</p>
<p>Where
UCLA-Arts is housed in the Broad Center, a beautiful new 8-story arts dedicated facility. Sculpture instruction happens here and also mostly in the Sculpture Yard/woodshop/metalshop: [UCLA</a> Department of Art | Sculpture](<a href=“http://www.art.ucla.edu/sculpture/pages/equip.html]UCLA”>http://www.art.ucla.edu/sculpture/pages/equip.html)</p>
<p>I’ve toured this area many times and it’s a terrific place to work. Plenty of space, all the equipment you could want, plenty of materials. An artist doesn’t need more than this.</p>
<p>The UCLA-Arts MFA program is central to the Los Angeles art world. The students become very well known to the West Coast art world (often times beyond) well before they graduate.</p>
<p>Additional Info
Here’s an overview of the MFA program:
[UCLA</a> Department of Art | Graduate (MFA)](<a href=“http://www.art.ucla.edu/graduate/index.html]UCLA”>Graduate Studies : UCLA Department of Art)</p>
<p>Here’s a link to the US New & World Report MFA-Sculpture rankings. I’m not sure how they are able to reliably rank something like this but here’s the link anyway:
[Sculpture</a> - Fine Arts - Graduate Schools - Education - US News](<a href=“http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/sculpture]Sculpture”>http://grad-schools.usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/best-graduate-schools/top-fine-arts-schools/sculpture)</p>
<p>Program Size
The Sculpture MFA program is tiny as are all of the Arts MFA programs at UCLA. You can see by this data that UCLA-Arts enrolls an average of 16 MFA students per year.
[Program</a> Profile Report - Art](<a href=“Program Profile Report - Art”>Program Profile Report - Art)</p>
<p>The average time to graduate is 3 years so we can assume that there are only 45-50 MFA art students at any given time. That would mean there would only be about 8 or 10 Sculpture MFA students on average at any given time. As I said, this is VERY one-on-one.</p>
<p>Competitive
As you can also see from the above link, this is a very competitive program with about a 3% acceptance rate.</p>
<p>I hope this info helps!
Best,
Wheaty</p>
<p>Thanks Wheaty! You are so generous with your research and of course, so helpful. My daughter has already visited some of the country’s other strong sculpture programs including Virginia Commonwealth University, Columbia, RISD and Yale which are as small as UCLA. She will not be applying for another year so she hopes to see a range of schools and of course she will need to have many options on her application list due to how selective all of these program are (most are around 3%). I am encouraging her to visit UCLA as we are California residents, even though she lives and works on the east coast following her undergraduate study. She is also not happy that all of the sculpture professors in UCLA’s MFA program are male, but hopefully they balance this with visiting artists. We also read that MFA students work in the Warner building in Culver City; is this different from the Broad facility you mentioned?</p>
<p>Studiomom,</p>
<p>My daughter is an undergrad Fine Art major (all done at Broad) so I don’t know too much about Sculpture studios at the Warner facility. I’m just guessing that the MFA’s use the Broad facilities because I can’t imagine they could be better at Warner but it’s just a guess. Go to the open house and ask them!!! :)</p>
<p>Your daughter has a GREAT list going - all wonderful schools and excellent for what she’s trying to do. Good for her!</p>
<p>I’m glad some of this helped, I wish I could offer more.
Best,
Wheaty</p>