Jonathan T. D. Neil, Head of Global Business Development for Sotheby’s Institute of Art (SIA) and Director of SIA-Los Angeles, announced the addition of a new “Interfield” Master's degree that combines Art Business and Fine Art. A first of its kind, this innovative MA is designed for a new generation of artists looking to combine the entrepreneurial acumen to build a sustainable creative practice with a professional life in the arts.
“Understanding the culture of the studio, and the kind of work, planning, and management required to engage in ambitious artistic projects, either at large scale or over long periods of time, is more necessary today than at any time before,” Neil said. “Whether you are the artist making the work, the curator commissioning it, or the producer charged with turning into a reality.”
“Understanding the culture of the studio...is more necessary today than at any time before.”
The new program merges studio practice courses from Claremont Graduate University's (CGU) Master of Fine Art (MFA) program with coursework in the business, markets, history and theory of art, as well as core courses in finance, accounting, law, and marketing.
CGU's Art Department Chair, Rachel Lachowicz, described the program as "an exciting approach to art and its myriad installation contexts. We cover it all: the making, producing, showing, viewing, placing, and the unconventional."
Students maintain a fine art practice while learning broadly transferable business and management principles and techniques. In contrast to a conventional MFA, candidates for this degree pursue an entrepreneurship sequence, capped by the Startup Studio—a course in which creative initiatives are pitched to panels of artists, arts professionals, business leaders, and entrepreneurs from the Los Angeles community.
This degree is one of several Interfield MAs being offered at CGU, and the first of SIA-LA and CGU’s joint Interfield offerings. Also launching in Fall 2018 is an Interfield MA between SIA-Los Angeles and CGU’s Center for Information Systems and Technology. This “arts and technology” degree is designed for students with an interest in the application of computer and data science to arts and cultural fields, or for students with an arts background who have a demonstrated interest and capacity for software programming and information technology.
Sotheby’s Institute has long offered professional development courses for artists through online and summer study courses. This new interdisciplinary Master’s degree in Los Angeles is an exciting new addition to the core MA programs also offered on our campuses in New York and London. It creates a new and important footprint for Sotheby’s Institute in the art world’s connected ecosystem, and recognizes that the art world expertise we have been teaching since 1969 are essential to artists as well as art business leaders.
To learn more about these two new MA degree offerings and the SIA-Los Angeles campus, click here.