Why IDSVA?
Today's artists, architects, curators, and creative scholars need more than an MFA. In our interconnected world, IDSVA challenges outdated paradigms by offering education that equips you with the practical skills and visionary mindset required for contemporary media and culture. We ask, "Why now, and why IDSVA?" as we prepare you for a future that has long since arrived.
"I was hired [by Georgia Southern University] in 2015 and received tenure in 2020... on the basis of my publications, conference presentations, exhibitions, a whole mix of things that wouldn't have been on my CV without the IDSVA experience."
Dr. Jason Hoelscher, IDSVA PhD 2019, Gallery Director and Professor at George Southern University
Low Residency
IDSVA has been pioneering and refining hybrid education since 2007. Online coursework and independent studies are pursued through the fall and spring semesters, via live video conference seminars, one-on-one calls, and asynchronous discussions. Summer and Winter intensive residencies in places like Mexico City, Madrid, and Marrakech integrate with online seminars and give IDSVA students a graduate education experience like no other.
Global Learning
The IDSVA experience is centered on Global Learning. IDSVA students see and feel and touch the ever-changing and deeply intertwined relations between the history of ideas and the history of visual culture. During the three-year course of study, students complete five residencies in the topological studies curriculum, traveling from one historic site to another. Residencies last from one to four weeks
Community
Both in online seminars and in intensive residencies around the world, students are encouraged to develop bonds with one another and with faculty members. Research happens within close-knit cohorts and small study groups, where people from diverse backgrounds and interests can share ideas and learn from each other. Regular presentations of students’ work in progress enable them to receive feedback from faculty and peers, and often lead to collaborations outside of class.
A Vision for the Future
IDSVA’s greatest strength and promise lie in its one of a kind degree, the PhD in Visual Arts: Philosophy, Aesthetics, and Art Theory. IDSVA remains the only school in the world that grants this particular degree, the purpose of which is to prepare artist-philosophers as future world leaders. We remain steadfast in our belief that the world needs creative people who can innovate, invent new modes of thought, and find ways of thinking toward a future that can overcome current and future crises, which are a direct consequence of our old ways of thinking.
The ways our students and alumni are making a difference in the world and their communities are many: from disseminating new ideas through publications, conferences, and exhibitions, to educating new generations of students, to being awarded fellowships and promoted to leadership positions in their professional environments. One can gain a measure of this success from the students’ and alumni’s profiles, which do not exhaust the manifold ways – more or less quantifiable – in which they leave their mark in society.
IDSVA students learn from wherever they live and work; they travel the world to learn from diverse cultures and histories, as well as from leading scholars and artists. At home and during residencies, IDSVA students complete a rigorous course of study centered on the ever-increasing importance of multidisciplinary knowledge. The message IDSVA delivers is a vision of the future. If IDSVA students see themselves as participants in history as opposed to observers of history, it is because they are part of an institution that is shaping the future: the future of global education, the future of philosophy and art, the future of life.
"Something about the program that surprised me was ... the depth of the friendships and relationships that we have with one another in each of our cohorts. Despite not being in a traditional space and institution- we live all over the country and the world as well- we are constantly coming together, not just in the residencies and the class time, but supporting one another outside of that."
Dr. Carolyn Jean Martin, 2018 David C. Driskell Fellow, 2024 Ted Coons Dissertation Prize Winner