The MA program in modern and contemporary art, criticism, and theory offers a unique and interdisciplinary program that centers engagement with art—as a material, critical, and social practice—in a curriculum designed to train scholars, artists, and museum and gallery professionals in the analytical skills, historical perspective, and theoretical fluency necessary for cultural workers today. Our students learn how art and its institutions have developed over time and acquire the tools to reimagine what they could become.

The program provides an intensive study of contemporary critical and theoretical issues surrounding 20th- and 21st-century artistic practices. During weekly first-year colloquia, students are also introduced to the work of some of the most prominent critics, artists, curators, and historians in the field today. Many courses are supplemented by field trips to museums and art galleries in New York City, just 20 miles south of the Purchase campus. The college’s Neuberger Museum of Art is also a major resource.

Updated 9-24-20