The Visiting Artists Program brings artists from around the world to join the MassArt community for a few days, weeks, or months. Artists of diverse backgrounds interact with students through lectures, slide talks, gallery walkthroughs, symposia, and residencies.

Some of these events are related to curricula, while others are designed to fill a gap or broaden the experience of being at MassArt. In keeping with its goal of bringing to the campus the major issues and controversies that animate the practice of contemporary fine arts and design, diverse programming is the rule, and the nature of a visit is anything but predictable.

Artists recently invited to lecture at the College, including painters Linda Besemer, Iona Brown, Carl Fudge, Julie Heffernan and Fred Tomaselli; photographers Tina Barney, Sophie Calle, Adam Fuss, Doug Hall and John Pfahl; designers Matthew Carter, Denise Korn and Robert Massin; sculptors and installation artists Polly Apfelbaum, St. Clair Cemin, Jim Hodges, Mel Kendrick, Rona Pondick, Doris Salcedo, Anne Wilson, and Sarah Sze; time-based media artists Tony Oursler, Pat Oleszko and Julia Heyward; curators Callie Angell and Sylvia Wolf; authors Russell Banks and John Edgar Wideman; and critic Eleanor Heartney, rounded out our students’ interdisciplinary experience here at MassArt.

Visits often coincide with the exhibition of an artist's work, and MassArt students have a unique opportunity to work intensively with an artist in preparing for his/her exhibition. In 2002, Cuban installation artist Carlos Estevez created his Dreamcomber exhibition with the help of MassArt students during his two-month residency. For her exhibition, Anne Wilson: Unfoldings, Anne Wilson installed her tour-de-force Topologies installation with the help of Fibers students and faculty. Wilson ended her ten-day mini residency with a standing-room-only gallery talk at her opening reception. In 2003, Mystic exhibition artists and faculty members Nona Hershey (printmaking) and Chuck Stigliano (sculpture) and sculptor Arlene Shechet gave gallery walkthroughs for their exhibition as did Polly Apfelbaum for her What Does Love Have To Do With It exhibition. In 2004, for the Earthly Delights exhibition, New York artist Ryan McGinness and Los Angeles artist Gina Ferrari each worked closely with student assistants to install his/her site specific mural and installation, respectively.

The Visiting Artists Program also facilitates the Adderley Lecture series, which brings to the College artists, teachers, and lecturers of color. Past lecturers include Amiri Baraka, Melvin Edwards, Arthur Jafa, Lorraine O'Grady, Sharon Patton, John Scott and Fred Wilson.

Visiting Artists events at the College are free and open to the public.

The College is accessible by the Green Line E train at the Longwood/Hospitals stop and the #39 bus.

Call: 617.879.7333 for updated information.