School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University Recently Updated

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (SMFA), provides an education in the visual arts for undergraduate, certificate, and continuing education students. SMFAs programs cover a wide range of artistic study, including digital animation, film, video, painting, illustration, and photography, among many others.

SMFA has been educating artists since its founding in 1876. The School was conceived at the same time as the Museum itself, as the crucial second part of a mission to educate through the arts. SMFA was intended to be a school of art; not simply a technical institute, but a school of the most rigorous ideas and concepts. Since its founding, the School's faculty, administration and curriculum have been dynamically engaged in questions of education in general, and art education in particular.

The Schools interdisciplinary, self-directed, and innovative curriculum is extremely unique: it emphasizes cultural, artistic, and intellectual diversity; it includes a wide range of media; it stresses the development of individual vision; it values artmaking more than adherence to curricular rules; and it stays deeply in touch with the external world of art, design, and technology. The SMFA program was designed by artists, for artists. It puts you, the artist, at the center. You will be encouraged here. You will be pushed. To take risks. To work in a medium you've never tried before. But you won't be told what to do. You will work with the faculty to develop your own voice, your own point of view; which is why our students, our graduates, go on to define new directions in the arts. Many are pioneers in their field. Others create entirely new fields. The education you receive here will prepare you for a world that is constantly changing and constantly placing very high demands on its participants.

SMFA is a challenging place; it is designed to be that way. In the end, it is an experience that will be profoundly rewarding. And that is what a really good education is all about.