Penn Fine Arts Collaborations

Institute of Contemporary Art
Nationally and for our graduate community, the Institute of Contemporary Art provides a forum for the presentation and documentation of recent developments in the visual arts. Artists present innovative work at the ICA and often lecture and critique students. The ICA hosts a number of lectures each year by visiting artists participating in our MFA program.

The Common Press
The Common Press is the letterpress printing studio at the University of Pennsylvania. The press is a collaboration of interests at Penn, including writing (Kelly Writers House), print culture (the Rare Book & Manuscript Library) and visual arts and design (the School of Design). The facility provides a mixed media environment where students can move between digital and manual image making, collaborating with writers, printmakers and others in the book arts. The Common Press exists to assist in teaching design and to facilitate collaborative projects across the university. It was founded last year, on January 17, 2006, the 300th anniversary of Benjamin Franklin's birth.

Poet Painter Series
The School of Design and Kelly Writers House present the Poet Painter Series, a program where distinguished poets and painters known for their collaborative work present slides talks, poetry readings, discussions, and critique graduate students in their studios. Recent participants have included, Bill Berkson, Kenward Elmslie, Yvonne Jacquette, Maureen Owen, Ron Padgett, George Schneeman, Trevor Winkfield, John Yau, and Geoff Young.

MFA Thesis Show in Old City
The graduating MFA class mounts a thesis exhibition in the gallery district of Philadelphia. In the past seven years the exhibition has been curated by Claudia Gould, Director Institute of Contemporary Art; Matt Freedman, sculptor and writer; Alex Baker, Curator of Contemporary Art at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Carol Diehl, Art Critic and Artist; Judith Stein, Independent Curator; Ingrid Schaffner, Senior Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art; Richard Torchia, Director of the Arcadia University Art Gallery and Artist; and William Pym, writer and independent curator.

Of the 2005 show at the IceBox Project Space, Philadelphia art critic Roberta Fallon writes, "Hiring a curator to hang Penn's student show is a breakthrough idea. A curated show creates a thematic pathway pointing up relationships between this student's sculpture and this student's painting. It's good for the viewer and good for the students."

"... As academic allegiances to style and content have given way to passionate and committed bodies of work, self conscious experiments in identity and polemics have been replaced by emphatic, beautiful and persuasive art."
- Matt Freedman, from the 2002 catalog essay

2009 MFA Thesis Exhibition Website