MIAMI, FLA.- ArtCenter/South Florida and Bruce High Quality Foundation University announce the launch of MFU: Miami, the pilot first semester of ArtCenter’s new fellowship program that bring together alternative education initiatives with distinguished faculty and cultural change-makers to develop new dialogues and scenarios that shed light on contemporary realities in the cultural sphere and beyond.

MFU: Miami was developed for artists specifically interested in art education and curating public programming that brings forth new methods for the exchange of knowledge.

“As the daunting costs of degrees and student loans become increasingly more challenging for today’s artists, ArtCenter/South Florida aims to provide new solutions and alternative paths that can really make a difference in an artist’s career,” said Maria del Valle, ArtCenter’s Executive Director. The new fellowship program is designed for visual artists, curators, researchers, writers, performers, and musicians at any stage in their career, and provides them with valuable resources, time, and feedback.

"Our goal is to get artists together and let them figure out what arts education should look like,” said Seth Cameron, President of Bruce High Quality Foundation (BHQFU). “It's a deceptively simple premise that has occupied BHQFU since we first hatched the idea a decade ago. Now, having run hundreds of rigorous, ridiculous and radical experiments with thousands of New York artists, we're thrilled to expand to Miami via this new partnership with ArtCenter/South Florida and see what new things we can learn."

The first 12-week residency is led in Miami by visiting faculty and guests from BHQFU, based in New York. This session will examine contemporary art and art education, from February 26 through May 31, 2017.

The first pilot session, BHQFU’s MFU: Miami offers a $3,750 stipend; live/work housing at ArtCenter/Downtown; and covers round-trip travel expenses if needed. Applications (received by the deadline of Dec. 15, 2016) are being reviewed by ArtCenter/South Florida and Bruce High Quality Foundation, and up to five fellows will be selected. MFU: Miami is proudly unaccredited and offers no degree. This first session will include group critiques, local visits, discussions and guest-artist lectures.

The customized experience provides an alternative to traditional university academics by empowering selected Fellows to gain knowledge from the visiting faculty from BHQFU and the visiting artists, and then further engages them to develop future cycles of programs that will be taught at ArtCenter/South Florida in the future.

“We are at a crossroads in Miami’s cultural community, and this new partnership with Bruce High Quality Foundation furthers ArtCenter’s commitment to expand the cultural terrain,” said del Valle.

Recent BHQFU guest artists have included Rashid Johnson, Lisa Yuskavage, Lorraine O’Grady, Huma Bhaba, Christine Sun Kim, David Salle, Lynne Tillman, Jayson Musson, Eileen Myles, Juliana Huxtable, Dana Schutz, Eva and Franco Mattes, Dawn Lundy Martin, Wayne Koestenbaum, and many more.

This new fellowship program in Miami was designed by ArtCenter’s Artistic Director, Natalia Zuluaga. Each semester will feature collaborations with different alternative study programs, to foster critical engagement, capacity building, and knowledge exchange (such as this first collaboration with BHQFU on this pilot semester, called MFU: Miami). Subsequent semesters will be named differently and will feature different educational partners.