Nearly 80 graduating MFA students of San Francisco Art Institute, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art, transformed the historic Old San Francisco Mint into a dynamic group exhibition, complete with multidisciplinary art installations in its bank vaults, ballrooms, corridors, facades, front lawn, and courtyards.  For just a few days this year from May 15 through the 18th visitors were invited to peruse the local landmark to experience artworks on view that revealed the breadth of work by the students, and in some cases even responded to the qualities, material, historical, or conceptual of the site. Throughout the sprawling exhibition, the greater Bay Area arts community was encouraged to celebrate the culmination of their art practices explored and fortified in SFAI’s MFA program.

This exhibition, a highlight of the many graduation ceremonies around the Bay Area taking place annually at this time, garners unique attention for a presentation that focuses solely on the multidisciplinary work by its graduating class, and placing that work into context of future ways of thinking about contemporary art. At SFAI, students earning an MFA in Studio Art or a dual MFA and MA degree may choose an emphasis in either Design and Technology, Film, New Genres, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, or Sculpture disciplines. With about twenty fewer MFA graduating artists this year than in 2013, this year’s MFA 2014 exhibition presented artists with more space in which to exhibit as well as opportunities for larger-scale installations.

More about San Francisco Art Institute’s MFA Studio Art program can be found here.