The closing reception is scheduled for May 29th, from 5:00-7:00 PM.

Cornell University’s Master of Fine Arts program is making its presence known in New York this month with a dynamic inaugural exhibition of 2008 MFA Graduates. The show is set to open May 22nd in their new Midtown space. Patti Phillips, Chair of the Art Department announces, “As six artists present a first group thesis exhibition in the AAP/NYC space, we encounter vivid evidence of the questions, issues, and preoccupations that drive their current work. What may seem to be a moment of conclusion and closure is actually thrillingly transitional. What we may see now in the work stimulates speculation—if inexact—about the developing concepts and deepening ideas of these independent, evolving art practices.”

With practices in sculpture, photography, video, print and painting, Tara Cooper, Monique Crine, Alika Herreshoff, Lindsey Glover, Boaz Nadav-Manes and Brian Sentman, by turns, present a striking range of concerns: the erotic relationship of subject to object, the fragmentary performance of identity, narrative counterpoint and the cinematic, the uncanniness of site, the film still in relation to painted portraiture, and the graphic language and liminal subjectivity of cartoons.

Michael Ashkin, Director of Graduate Studies at Cornell University notes, “I am excited that we now have an opportunity to exhibit our work in the city to which most of our faculty and students have the greatest connection. The timing of this exhibition is also particularly fortuitous because it is the first one since our MFA program reconstituted itself as inter-disciplinary a year ago.”

The endowed program at Cornell University supports a uniquely tight-knit community, while providing the opportunity for an interdisciplinary education alongside distinguished researchers. Previous Cornell MFA recipients have been awarded John Simon Guggenheim and Pollock- Krasner Foundation Fellowships, DAAD scholarships, and are represented in the collections of the MoMA, Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Smithsonian Institution.