Each semester, representatives from Sotheby’s Institute visit cities throughout Europe and North America to share information about our academic programmes and answer your questions. If you’re interested in learning more about the Institute and all of the opportunities we have to offer, take a look at where we’ll be during the Autumn and please join us at one our events.
A few places remain for our 2012 – 2013 London and New York Master’s programmes in Art Business, Contemporary Art, and Fine and Decorative Art, as well as London MA programmes in East Asian Art, Contemporary Design, and Photography. Qualified candidates are urged to apply as soon as possible. London programs start on September 14 and New York programmes start on September 4.
Learn More about London MA Programmes >
Learn More about New York MA Programmes >
For questions about the admissions process and to learn more about financial assistance and scholarships, please contact: admissions@sothebysinstitute.com
Sotheby’s Institute of Art is pleased to unveil our newly redesigned homepage! Here’s what you need to know about the new layout and features:
Guide Me: This interactive tool allows you to explore the Institute’s many paths of study in one convenient, user-friendly menu. By selecting a specific city, programme, or subject area, you can see which study options best align with your interests and begin imagining your future in the international art world.
Going on Now: Take a look at what’s happening at the Institute right now. Hear first-hand accounts from students who are on study trips around the world, check out profiles on current students, and read interviews with gradates who work in art-related careers across the globe.
Academic Leadership: Learn more about our esteemed faculty members, discover academic conferences, and join us for lectures, book signings and other events of interest.
Facebook: “Like” us on Facebook to access photos, videos, articles, and other interesting content relevant to our students, faculty and alumni, as well as prospective candidates and friends of the Institute.
From Our Blog: The blog is your leading source for news, upcoming deadlines, and all the need-to-know practical information about what’s going on at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Check in regularly for the latest happenings across our global campuses.
Questions or feedback about the new homepage? Post a comment below or email us: marketing@sothebysinstitute.com.
Sotheby's Institute Graduation, London
Lynne Newman Foundation Provides Generous Scholarships for Master’s Degree Programmes at Sotheby’s Institute of Art New York and London
Newman Scholarships help support Degree Candidates in Fine and Decorative Art, East Asian Art, Photography and Contemporary Design. Additional funds are also available in Art Business and Contemporary Art.
David C. Levy, President of Sotheby’s Institute of Art is pleased to announce that Sotheby’s Institute has received funds from the Lynne Newman Foundation to support new scholarships for degree candidates in select programmes at the Institute’s campus in London and New York.
Sotheby’s Institute of Art is among the world’s leading institutions for post graduate art studies offering Master of Arts degrees, PhDs and post graduate diplomas to an international student body of aspiring arts professionals making an in- depth study of art, art history and the art markets. The Lynn E. Newman Foundation funds will specifically support students interested in the close observation of objects in relationship to their historical significance, to art patronage, and their relevance to contemporary art markets.
Students are invited to apply for Lynne Newman scholarships for the academic year 2012/2013. These Scholarships will provide up to a full semester’s tuition for qualified students. Additionally, Sotheby’s Institute of Art has substantial scholarship and financial assistance funds available to support Master’s Degree Programmes in Art Business and Contemporary Art as well as the Gordon Lang scholarship for East Asian Art and has received funding from the AHRC for “Studentships” that are available to citizens of the United Kingdom at its London Campus.
Lynne Newman Scholarships support:
Fine and Decorative Art/American Fine and Decorative Art (London & New York) –Based on the curriculum originally developed by Sotheby’s auction house to prepare future professionals for careers in its global network, this programme fosters in-depth knowledge of artworks as well as their materials and techniques by stressing the understanding and practice of connoisseurship.
East Asian Art (London)-Designed for those who wish to become Asian art specialists, dealers and scholars, the art history of China, Japan and Korea is the focus of this in-depth program.
Photography (London)-With markets as a context, students are introduced to the critical analysis of photography from the earliest experiments to the most recent developments, with an emphasis upon photography as an aesthetic practice.
Contemporary Design (London)-Combining academic study of 20th Century and contemporary decorative arts and its markets with an exploration of the professional design world, this programme examines objects from the Art Nouveau period to the pluralism of the present day.
Other Sotheby’s Scholarship Funds Support:
Art Business (London & NY)- This programme is designed for students who wish to combine an understanding of business theory and practice with the technical structural and legal elements of the art markets. Students visit private and corporate collections, museums, galleries, art fairs and festivals as integral parts of the curriculum. Students have privileged access to Sotheby’s auction house, its subject specialists, auctioneers and sales executives.
Contemporary Art (London & NY)- Focusing on post war art to the present, this programme emphases the artwork itself and the tools needed to understand it. Close analysis of works in all media, from painting and sculpture to video and performance, forms a crucial part of the curriculum as do topical debates on the theoretical and institutional contexts of the art-world today. Students and faculty visit local museums and galleries in London or New York, supplemented by extended study visits to European and/or American museums, collections, biennials, artists’ studios and galleries.
For more information or to apply to Sotheby’s Institute of Art please visit www.sothebysinstitute.com/admissions
Richard Prince
Earlier this year Richard Prince lost in court to Patrick Cariou, whose images Prince appropriated for several collages and paintings. The debate is still raging, especially as the court’s ruling would bar artists from appropriating images unless they are commenting on the original work–something Prince’s work fails to do, and a difficult test to use in the digital media world where images are so easily accessible and useful to artists for any and all purposes. Randy Kennedy has written an excellent analysis of the case and its potential impact on artists, collectors and museums in today’s New York Times. The implications of this case are far-reaching and controversial but might not have much effect today, according to Kennedy, who reminds us that the proverbial horse has long ago fled the barn. MoMA and the Metropolitan Museum
a Richard Prince collage using Patrick Cariou's photos
have weighed in on Prince’s side to support freedom of expression for artists, but so much appropriation is happening today in so many places, the courts would have a difficult time pursuing perpetrators and if the law stands it would be nearly impossible to enforce.
Helen Frankenthaler painting in 1969
Now that she has died, Helen Frankenthaler is being widely acclaimed by art critics and others, but remembered as a force for conservatives and responsible for the weakening of federal arts funding by others. In her New York Times “Critic’s Notebook“, Roberta Smith talks about Frankenthaler and John Chamberlain (who also died this week) saying each brought a, “new, unfettered approach to materials that pushed their respective mediums toward greater expressive freedom, unabashed physicality and a rough-edged, aggressively color-based beauty.”
Her husband, Jerry Saltz, tells us in his tribute in New York Magazine that, “not enough people have thought about the far-reaching accomplishments of Helen Frankenthaler, foremost inventor in the fifties of what is variously called American Color Field painting and post-painterly abstraction.”
Others, however, remember a darker side of Frankenthaler. The Los Angeles Times obituary reminds us that: “Frankenthaler did take a highly public stance during the late 1980s “culture wars” that eventually led to deep budget cuts for the National Endowment for the Arts and a ban on grants to individual artists that still persists. At the time, she was a presidential appointee to the National Council on the Arts, which advises the NEA’s chairman.”
“In a 1989 commentary for the New York Times, she wrote that, while ‘censorship and government interference in the directions and standards of art are dangerous and not part of the democratic process,’ controversial grants to Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe and others reflected a trend in which the NEA was supporting work “of increasingly dubious quality. Is the council, once a helping hand, now beginning to spawn an art monster? Do we lose art … in the guise of endorsing experimentation?”
