MICA | Academic Programs | Undergraduate Programs

BFA Degree Programs

MICA's undergraduate curriculum minimizes barriers among disciplines and provides many opportunities to explore a wide array of interests and to experiment with a variety of mediums and approaches to art-making.

You select a major, and, if you like, a minor and concentration that let you dive into an area of study and plumb its depths-with the facilities, equipment, and faculty support you need to fully realize your ideas. A six-hour studio day provides you with the time you need to follow a line of thought through to its completion and to share your ideas with your professors and other students.

This focused, structured approach to creating art lays the foundation for the discipline you will need in your life as an artist. Through a generous number of electives you can also explore other disciplines and mediums.

The work that MICA students exhibit in the more than 70 student-focused exhibitions in our galleries each year is evidence that the curriculum encourages and values cross-disciplinary work. Painters do site-specific installations, fiber artists create performances and other time-based arts, sculptors create 3D animations, illustrators make paintings.

Your four years at MICA will provide you with a balance of structure (disciplined, rigorous study) and freedom (opportunities to explore your unique vision) that will lay the groundwork for a life of continual exploration and achievement.

Studio Majors and Concentrations

In reviewing the program descriptions for the majors and programs listed in the menu above, pay particular attention to the incredible number of courses and faculty available to you. Our course offerings reflect the array of aesthetic and critical approaches of the MICA faculty - professional artists who collectively have won virtually every prize available to artists internationally. Their ranks include artists whose work in traditional mediums is shown in major museum and galleries around the world those who are shaping the direction of new genres such as performance, video, and installation.

Our studio facilities and equipment match our curriculum in breadth and quality. You are treated as a professional artist and given the tools to produce what you envision: printmaking facilities that combine centuries-old traditions with high-tech output options, a 3D prototyping printer for sculptures, walk-in kilns, a foundry, professional power tools, a computer embroidery machine, video cameras and digital editing equipment, advanced sound studios, and, of course, many spacious, light-flooded studios for painting, drawing, and sculpture. In the past year, MICA has added 40,000 square feet of additional independent studio space for upper-division fine arts students.

Beyond the campus, MICA offers more study-abroad options than any of our peer institutions, including semester- or year-long opportunities in Canada, England, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, and Scotland, to name just a few, as well as two- to four-week intensive summer programs with senior faculty in Greece, Italy, Canada, and Mexico. In addition, MICA runs, in cooperation with the Institute of American Universities, the Center for Art and Culture in Aix-en-Provence, France, which offers an intensive, semester- or year-long studio experience for fine arts majors in the third year or above.

Throughout the academic year, your studies will also be enriched by engagement with visiting artists whose work is at the cutting edge of contemporary cultural and artistic endeavor. Each year, dozens of scholars, critics, artists, designers, and poets come to campus to meet with students, critique their work, and share their own work.

For example, artists in residence at MICA in one recent year included musician and artist David Byrne, digital photographer Gregory Crewdson, South African civil rights activist Dr. Mamphela Ramphele, novelist Madison Smartt Bell, acerbic philosopher/cartoonist and MacArthur Foundation “genius grant” recipient Ben Katchor, dancer/performance artist Nancy Romita, philosopher/art critic and painter Arthur Danto, poet Frank Lima, computer game designer Eric Zimmerman, painter Ellen Phelan, poets from the Carolina African-American Writers’ Collective, mixed media installation artist Polly Apfelbaum, and painter/contemporary miniaturist Shahzia Sikander.