School of Visual Arts Announces New Faculty and Lecturers in Design Criticism

School of Visual Arts (SVA), New York City, has named additional faculty members and guest lecturers in the MFA Design Criticism Department, the country's first graduate-level degree program dedicated to understanding and interpreting design in all its forms.

Scheduled to begin in the fall of 2008, the new program was founded by writer, critic and educator Alice Twemlow, who chairs the department, and Steven Heller, co-chair of the MFA Design Department at SVA.

The MFA in Design Criticism will prepare graduates for careers as design critics by providing the intellectual tools for researching, analyzing, evaluating and chronicling all aspects of design.

The two-year, 64-credit curriculum emphasizes the skills and knowledge relevant to those who wish to write about design on a full-time, professional basis; or pursue alternative critical practices, such as curating, publishing, design management or teaching.

In addition to courses taught by core faculty, there will be an ongoing program of lectures by distinguished international critics, authors, journalists, curators, designers, editors and historians.

Students will produce tangible documents of their critical practice, such as books, blogs, documentaries, course syllabi, conferences and exhibitions.

The program will culminate in a thesis, which students will present at an annual public conference dedicated to design criticism, to be inaugurated in the spring of 2010.