In Focus: The MFA Review: The Ohio State University

Each installment of In Focus: The MFA Review highlights a unique MFA program for photographic artists, providing readers a concise overview of its identification, curriculum, college, pupil expertise, monetary assist, and post-graduation outcomes. It additionally serves as a showcase of the artistic work produced by college, college students, and alumni. Rather than functioning as rankings or endorsements, these options are supposed as sensible beginning factors—instruments to assist potential college students examine packages, determine what issues most to them, and make extra knowledgeable selections about their graduate training. While sure particulars shared in these articles could change over time, my hope is that these program snapshots provide a transparent sense of what every represents within the current second.

Thank you to Gina Osterloh and others for finishing this interview and compiling all the pictures/assets!

Institution identify: The Ohio State University

Degree Title: MFA in Art

Location: Columbus, OH

Link to Program Page: 

Link to Application Page: 

Link to Visiting Artist Program: 

Instagram: @osu_art_

Tell us slightly about your program. How would you outline its scope and goal?

We provide the MFA in Art (with specializations in Art and Technology, Ceramics, Film/Video, Glass, Painting/Drawing, Photography, Printmaking, or Sculpture). The program is structured flexibility permitting college students to chart their very own path amongst these 8 areas.  The Department of Art affords a 66-semester-hour graduate MFA terminal diploma,  catering to college students wishing to pursue a profession making artwork and educating artwork.  Our MFA engages graduate college students in a curriculum that’s hands-on, multidisciplinary, collaborative, and research-based. We emphasize understanding of arts and tradition, particularly visible tradition, in a world, culturally numerous, and technological society.

What would you say makes your program particular?

Full tuition remission plus stipend and 100% backed pupil healthcare for 3 years. We have state-of-the-art services and famend college (together with 3 Guggenheim Award recipients since 2019). Students are offered non-public or semi-private studio areas with 24/7 entry at some stage in their research.

In addition to departmental funding for graduate work, further grant alternatives can be found by way of the Division of Arts & Humanities, College of Arts and Sciences, and facilities and departments akin to Global Arts + Humanities, the Center of Ethnic Studies, and the Department of Women’s, Gender and Sexuality Studies.  Students additionally profit from proximity to and collaborations with the Wexner Center for the Arts, the Columbus Museum of Art, the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum, and rather more.

What specialised services can be found for pupil use (i.e. darkroom, lighting studio, print lab)?

Our pictures services embrace two giant darkrooms that assist silver gelatin printing, different processes, in addition to 16mm movement image movie processing; a lighting studio with strobe lights, digital print lab with two wide-format Canon printers,  excessive decision digital cameras; movie scanning applied sciences. Please additionally see our Department web site for our huge services in artwork & know-how, sculpture, glass, printmaking, portray/drawing, ceramics, and movie/video. The Department of Art additionally has the Living Art & Ecology Lab (LAEL) which helps interdisciplinary artistic analysis associated to human relationship with the surroundings. Students even have entry to ACCAD, the Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design.

Is your program strictly photography-focused, or does it encourage/permit interdisciplinary work?

We assist what every particular person MFA college students needs to pursue– we assist interdisciplinary work and conversely, if an MFA pupil needs to work solely in pictures, we 100% assist them.

Do you concentrate on a selected space (i.e. documentary, experimental, environmental work)?

Each college member is ready to assist a variety of photographic methodologies. A giant energy of the MFA Program is that the professor-artists working immediately with pictures span a variety of practices.

And as soon as in this system, is a pupil in a position to shift their focus if their artistic pursuits change?

We assist an MFA pupil’s journey! Alum Benedict Scheuer entered this system working with extra conventional pictures which developed into sculptures and drawings on silk. Samuel Lo (MFA, 2026) has created an expansive vary of photographic strategies from shade inkjet prints, scanning black and white movie, to performances for the digicam and printing on laser-cut Plexi. His collection Waypoints (2025-2026) unites these photographic kinds and an enormous group of multiracial Asian American artists of the previous, current, and future.  Samuel Lo’s creative methods embrace combining staged performances for the digicam and vernacular on a regular basis pictures of family and friends in Hong Kong, Maryland, Ohio, and Hawai’i. His pictures additionally depict the Milky Way galaxy, pictures of oceans and rivers, in tandem with pictures of his physique submerged in water from geographical places which can be “Waypoints” (additionally the title of his thesis exhibition)– ancestral and chosen household websites which can be guides and waypoints in his life.

How structured is the curriculum? Are there required programs, or is it extra self-directed?

There are required programs together with a first-year seminar and the three^rd yr Thesis and Research course.   Beyond these two required seminars, college students, select from a variety of programs within the division and join with a wide range of thrilling analysis and educational departments throughout the college. Many of the hours  include unbiased research items with varied college members.

Does this system incorporate video work or rising media akin to AI, VR/AR, or 3D/360 imaging?

Yes! We have all of those applied sciences and super college who concentrate on these fields and all of our college are exhibiting artists on the planet. The Ohio State University additionally has ACCAD, the Advanced Computing Center for Art & Design.

Does this system provide profession improvement assist, akin to portfolio critiques, workshop/convention attendance, or networking alternatives?

The program brings in visiting artists, curators, and cultural staff to foster networking. Cineseries is an amazing MFA pupil curated movie program, and the movies are screened within the Film Video Theater on the Wexner Center for the Arts. This Autumn SPE might be at The Ohio State University. We have collaborative programming with the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Columbus Museum of Art. Recently, visiting artist Walid Raad did a workshop with MFA college students in regards to the artwork of the artist discuss! Columbus Museum of Art Curator of Collections and Exhibitions Daniel Marcus gave a chat to graduate college students, sharing his current curatorial expertise and path into and thru the museum world. One huge networking benefit of our program is that along with The Ohio State University’s giant interdisciplinary group and humanities in Columbus– is that we’re surrounded by different cities with sturdy arts programming akin to Cleveland and Pittsburgh.

What are key commencement necessities (exhibition, thesis paper, portfolio, and many others.)?

Key commencement necessities are profitable  completion of 66 credit score hours of coursework.  The MFA Thesis Exhibition and an oral protection of the coed’s put in work within the exhibition is required. Ohio State University additionally requires a minimal 8-page paper which is archived by the OSU Libraries on-line.

Who are your present college members?

Faculty members who facilitate and contribute to the Photography Area MFA Graduate Critiques are Jared Thorne, Dionne Lee, and Gina Osterloh. With this stated, lots of our college activate pictures and its expanded subject together with non-area affiliated and Roy Lichtenstein Endowed Chair Professor Carmen Winant, Film/Video Professor Roger Beebe, Painting and Drawing Professor Suzanne Silver, Sculpture Professor Alison Crocetta, and Art & Technology Professors Illya Mousavijad,  Laleh Mehran and Chris Coleman who’s the Director of ACCAD. Our program is interdisciplinary, and the listing of all our college is on our web site:

What are their areas of artistic curiosity?

Professor Gina Osterloh’s picture tableaux and performances for the digicam handle the intersections of visible notion and identification. Osterloh’s work was featured in Aperture magazine’s issue “Being & Becoming: Asian in America” 2023.  Professor Carmen Winant’s work challenges the methods we perceive girls’s energy, pleasure, labor, therapeutic, and liberation by way of giant scale installations, public artwork, and collage. Professor Jared Thorne works within the documentary custom, his present work paperwork Planned Parenthood buildings, lots of them lately closed, immersed of their surrounding landscapes all through Ohio, Indiana, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.  Professor Dionne Lee works in vary of mediums together with collage, darkroom methods, video and drawing. As said in Lee’s recent interview in Aperture journal with Gabrielle L’Hirondelle Hill, which is from Lee’s monograph Dionne Lee: Currents (Aperture, 2026), Dionne Lee’s work speaks to relationships of “land, power, survival and Black identity,” and the way, “belonging is something to be cultivated.”

Are college members primarily full-time or adjunct?

For MFA coursework, college members are full-time professors. Many of our undergraduate 2000 and 3000 degree programs are taught by adjunct instructors and Graduate Teaching Associates. And we have now super adjunct instructors educating our undergraduate pictures programs together with Guggenheim Fellow Laura Larson, Becca Copper whose artwork follow encompasses pictures and social follow, Geren Heurtin, and alum Samuel Lo, Marcus Morris who was lately awarded a CPW Center of Photography Woodstock residency, and Matty Machado. Laura Larson additionally educating our undergraduate Art 5000 Professional Practices course.

How concerned are college in mentoring college students past coursework?

Faculty are very concerned by way of unbiased research items, the educating seminar which helps our MFA college students with educating methodologies, intensive thesis committee conferences, writing letters of advice, and introducing college students to networks outdoors the college.

How usually do visitor artists, curators, or critics go to for lectures and/or critiques?

Each course has the assist to herald at the least one visiting artist, and every semester the Department of Art at OSU has two excessive profile visiting artists who conduct studio visits and a public lecture.  Please see our visiting artist page! Students additionally interact with further visiting artists hosted by the Department of the History of Art, the Center for Global Arts + Humanities, the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Columbus Museum of Art.

How many college students are admitted annually, and what number of are pictures centered?

9 – 14 are accepted per admission cycle for our MFA program and from the scholars admitted annually roughly two per yr are picture centered.

What is the approximate cohort measurement, and what impact does this have on critiques, collaboration, and networking?

In the Photography Area, we have now roughly 5 to six MFA college students for our Photography Area critiques, and every MFA cohort yr is 9 to 14 college students which opens up many alternatives for collaboration. Our MFA college students foster collaboration inside and out of doors the Department of Art.

What type of work are present college students creating?

Our present photo-based college students are working with documentary approaches laying naked histories of red-lining and the development of freeways in Columbus, Ohio; histories of labor; queer Appalachia households; intergenerational connections and ancestral lineages; performances for the digicam; photograms of gauze; the intimacy of breath; and connections between pandemics akin to Covid-19 and the AIDS disaster.

What is the overall value of this system (and length), and what funding choices can be found?

This is the best good thing about being a part of the MFA program. As talked about, it’s tuition if absolutely coated plus a educating stipend and healthcare advantages.

Are there educating assistantships, and what number of tuition do they cowl?

As talked about, Graduate MFA college students within the Department of Art train one course per semester and obtain 100% tuition coated plus a stipend and healthcare. On event (lately it has been one or two yearly) distinctive MFA college students are chosen by a college committee and obtain a Fellowship which permits the identical tuition and healthcare protection however with out the educating obligation.

Are further grants/assets out there to assist pupil tasks?

Yes! There is the smaller Fergus Materials Grant throughout the Department of Art, and from the college there are a number of giant grants and fellowships that college students can apply for. Since we’re a R1 college, there are a number of aggressive further funding alternatives college students can apply to.

What forms of careers to alumni pursue, and the way does this system assist college students after commencement?

Our alumni pursue careers as educators, curatorial assistants, assistant professors, editorial photographers, business photographers. We write sturdy letters of advice and keep in communication with our alum.

How linked is the alumni community, and do graduates keep concerned with this system?

Many graduates keep to show for a yr or two and subsequently keep entry to services. We are at present within the technique of engaged on our alumni database. Graduate college students usually keep concerned with this system by way of the thesis committee they selected and college they set up mentorship with.