NEW YORK— At a time when the art market is piping hot (despite predictions of a correction by market watchers like collector Eli Broad), graduate art programs across the U.S. have been one of the main beneficiaries. Schools have seen an increase in applicants, and the MFA degree carries a new prestige. The results for students are not inconsiderable. There is greater chance of finding success upon graduation, and a lucky few forgo the usual early-career struggles and shoot straight to art-world stardom. But has the market in turn changed the nature of art education itself? Do MFA programs address the market in their curriculum, respond to it, or ignore it altogether?  

Following a series of interviews with teachers, students, and alumni of MFA programs at schools including Yale University, Columbia University, School of Visual Arts, and Hunter College, ARTINFO found that almost everyone we spoke to agreed that there is little attention paid to the market in graduate schools, at least on the surface. Whether in making art or critiquing it, the focus still seems to be on a much nobler cause than trying to be the next hot art star or creating work that goes along with a current trend. And yet, by most accounts, the market is nonetheless something of an unavoidable presence, which students, however idealistic, must learn to come to terms with.

It’s a complicated situation that is summed up nicely by Yola Monakhov, a 2007 graduate of Columbia who has worked internationally as a news photographer in crisis areas and for the past year and a half has been a contributing photographer to the New Yorker. “A lot of the rhetoric in the past two years in the program has been ostensibly anticommercial, but people are showing in galleries and selling work like everybody else,” she says. “To be in school at this time, when the market is so abuzz, is difficult because of the sheer power of all that money. It would be as difficult as being a stage actor in the shadow of Hollywood.”

The MARKET v. The Market

Of course, it’s old news by now that savvy dealers go to MFA open-studio events and thesis shows to find artists either to represent or to feature in exhibitions. But do the schools and teachers encourage such close interaction with the art market? According to artist David Humphrey, a critic at Yale, the school does not promote this type of activity and, if anything, frowns on overt careerism. “Sometimes [the market]’s there as this kind of unspoken gorilla that people have on their mind, but what happens inside the program stays focused on the issues, the history, the social context [of art],” he says. “The market does have a big force inside the grad studio, but I think it’s an ambiguous force, sometimes pernicious, sometimes not, but something to be dealt with. You pretend it’s not there and then it comes back, you address it, and make it go away.”

Cat Balco, who graduated from Yale’s Painting and Printmaking program in May 2007 and now teaches painting and drawing at Hartford Art School, confirms Humphrey’s statement: “The market’s certainly something that’s in the air; because many of my classmates are showing pretty seriously it’s definitely out there.” But Balco says it’s rarely discussed in critiques. “Nobody gets kudos for having shows. If anything, it’s the opposite. In one critique some faculty member said, ‘This looks like professionalizing too soon,’ in a pejorative sense.” And yet while Balco stresses that students don’t focus on the market, she says that they did wish it were easier overall to be a practicing artist.

Her concerns remind us that when we talk about the market, we may be talking about one of two very different things. On the one hand there’s the behemoth we read about in newspapers, in which a few bold-face names like Gagosian, Hirst, Koons, and Saatchi earn millions in what looks from the outside like a game of Monopoly. On the other hand, there are the more scaled-down, familiar concerns of painters, sculptors, and others who are trying to make it as practicing artists.    

According to Josh Jordan, who graduated from Yale’s Painting and Printmaking department in 1997 and is now teaching at Montclair State University, one value of the MFA is that it confers a kind of legitimacy on a young artist. He believes that earning a degree from Yale, though it’s unlikely to be a ticket to instant success (of the kind seen in such highly publicized as those of 2002 Columbia graduate Dana Schutz and 2005 Hunter graduate Jules de Balincourt), is like having “overdraft protection on your checking account.”

“The perception of Yale and the reputation of the pedigree is significant enough in some people’s minds that they tend to hesitate when criticizing or questioning the credibility of the art or artist,” he says.

Such credibility is particularly valuable for MFA graduates who must wrestle not only with the difficulty of achieving a successful career as an artist, but also the rather hefty grad-school price tag. Students pay $24,000 a year at SVA, $27,000 at Yale, and $39,000 at Columbia. Compared to those numbers, Hunter’s not-unsubstantial fee of $6,400 for in-state students seems like a real bargain. Given how unlikely it is that MFA graduates will shoot straight to fame and fortune, many students could benefit from some real-world financial advice. Upon graduation, they will face the challenge not only of how to begin to make a living, but also how to deal with a sizable debt.

Enter Jackie Battenfield. A practicing artist herself, Battenfield is also writing a book with a working title of “The Artist’s Guide: How to Make a Living Doing What You Love,” set to be published in fall 2008. In addition, she heads the Artists in the Marketplace program at the Bronx Museum of the Arts and has taught a similar class at Columbia, The Business of Art: Building and Sustaining a Career in the Visual Arts, for the past four years. About half of the students in Columbia’s MFA program enroll in her course, which is open only to second-year graduate students. According to Battenfield, the class is not about the market or how to sell your art. Instead it asks “What is life like after graduate school?” and explains “how to live your life with art in it over the long term.”

Battenfield is encouraged that many students seem to question the status quo when it comes to the art business. “Many of them have not come directly from an undergraduate program to a graduate program, so they realize there is some stuff they need to know about. Leaving school and wondering why everything out there has to be learned through trial and error makes them start wondering why they couldn’t have gotten some information while they were in school.” She also suggests a practical reason why students are not making work that reflects the market. “An artist’s life is difficult enough. If you aren’t in the studio working with ideas that are compelling to you, then go do something else. It’s crazy to be making art just for a market.”

While there is no public record of how many art-related business classes are taught around the country, Battenfield confirms that Virginia Commonwealth University, the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago have them, while Parsons the New School for Design previously offered one. California Institute of the Arts and Maryland Institute College of Art offer them on the undergraduate level.

Trendy Work and Hand Signals

Abby Manock, a 2007 graduate of Columbia who took Battenfield’s class and is now working as an artist’s assistant, agrees with her former teacher that the market is not an overriding concern of classmates, but she argues that it does assert itself to some degree in the educational setting. Manock says the market “is not discussed in relation to an artwork or whether it could sell, and most work was not what I would consider trendy,” but concedes, “some trendy work was made by a few people.” She says it was not discussed in her individual critiques, but believes that if she had brought it up, her teachers would not have objected.

On the other hand, at Hunter College—sometimes called the next best thing after Yale or Columbia because of its reasonable tuition and large studio facilities—current student Orit Ben-Shitrit denies that the market has a strong force there. She claims students would rather have more tangible resources such as access to cutting-edge technology than deal with the realities of the market. She says the market is not taught at all and she doesn’t want it to be: “It might be detrimental. I’m into making good, honest work, not thinking about the market.” While admitting some students may be making work that is easier to sell than others, she says most are into experimentation and pushing boundaries.

While much talk about the market deals with commercial galleries, former SVA student Eric Guzman, a 2003 graduate who now directs the sculpture department there and teaches Intro to Digital Sculpture, notes that nonprofit spaces were often ignored in discussions about opportunities for artists. He recalls that teachers talked a lot about Chelsea, but he believes they should have been focusing more on Williamsburg, Brooklyn, where it would have been easier for a recent graduate to get a show at the time than in Chelsea.

Guzman—who makes machinelike sculptures that often employ high-powered lights—tells a story that when SVA faculty member and noted art critic Jerry Saltz took students on class trips to galleries, he warned them not to say anything openly negative in front of dealers. Instead, Saltz told them to use a series of secret hand signals to indicate whether they liked the work or not. It seems the risk of upsetting a potential connection was simply not worth it.

“Some people go to grad school for personal reasons or creative reasons, and some go to increase their chances to sell their work, but don’t want to declare this,” says Guzman of his MFA experience. “Some people understood the market, and one or two that were really savvy may have changed their work for the market. But is that good?”