MFA Fine Art

Our MFA programme aims to strengthen your motivation, self-reflection and ambition as an emerging artist. We do this by subjecting art-making to intense critical scrutiny.

• We place a strong emphasis on student-centred learning in studio crits and personal tutorials. Tuition is directed by your art-making, its key concerns, and your leading ideas taken together.
• The programme promotes communication across a wide international cohort of artists, as well as across an open range of media. From this, artists learn how their work and ideas are understood from different social, artistic and intellectual contexts.
• While on the MFA you will continually engage with what it means to practise as an artist today, and the position taken by an art-practice in relation to art's complex history and its currency in wider social and cultural processes.
• We place great emphasis on how artists look to impact and challenge prevailing expectations of art, and whether their work does so.
• The structure and tuition of the programme are not divided by media. Our students engage with diverse media according to the needs of their practice, including painting, sculpture, printmaking, installation, performance, socially engaged practice, art writing, textiles, digital media, sound and video.
• This degree has been described as one of the most influential MFA programmes in the world.

Contact the department

If you have specific questions about the degree, contact John Chilver.

Applicants for Year One full-time and part-time (home students) Diploma stage

You must have or expect to be awarded an undergraduate degree of at least second class standard (or international equivalent), plus experience as an artist.

Applicants for entry directly onto Year Two full-time and Year Three part-time of the programme (home students) routes

You must already be in possession of 120 grade credits from another suitably related postgraduate study to apply for direct entry into Year Two of the programme on either a full or part-time basis.

Requirement for part-time study

You need to have your own studio space in which to work over the four years of the programme.

You may also be considered for the MFA Fine Art programme if you are not a graduate or if your undergraduate degree is in an unrelated field, but you have relevant experience and can show that you have the ability to work at postgraduate level.

International qualifications

We accept a wide range of international qualifications. Find out more about the qualifications we accept from around the world.

If English isn’t your first language, you will need an IELTS score (or equivalent English language qualification) of 7.0 with a 7.0 in writing and no element lower than 6.5 to study this programme. If you need assistance with your English language, we offer a range of courses that can help prepare you for postgraduate study.

Graduates from the Goldsmiths MFA Fine Art establish themselves as artists of significance in the field of contemporary fine art. Many have won prizes and shown in exhibitions of international importance. They have also had work acquired by museums and national collections.

Upon completion of the MFA programme the majority of graduates continue with the critically informed art practices they have fostered at Goldsmiths and go on to contribute effectively to the development of contemporary fine art in whichever cultural location and working practice they are situated. These individual and collective undertakings importantly spur a 'tectonic' change in the concerns and critical competencies of contemporary fine art with respect to the cultures in which it takes place and which it addresses.

Some graduates of the programme proceed to research-level study in various fields of fine art, while others establish themselves as teachers in the subject area. Several have established reputations as writers on contemporary art, some in journals of national and international status. Others have gone on to teach on – and lead – fine art programmes
at universities.

See our list of recent MFA art alumni list.

Supporting your professional development

The programme supports students’ professional development with the following provisions:

• The Visiting Tutor programme allows students to make direct contact and build networks with established artists, curators, gallerists and writers
• The Writing for Artists workshops provide training to students for writing statements and applications
• Professional Development talks invite professional artists, curators and gallerists to discuss careers
• Goldsmiths CCA employs students as gallery assistants
• The Junior Fellow scheme employs graduates to provide experience of working within the Department of Art
• The Exhibitions Hub supports current and recent students to make exhibitions that will help their transition into a professional art practice