INSTITUTE FOR DOCTORAL STUDIES
IN THE VISUAL ARTS
To understand how ideas and visual culture have intersected and initiated new moments in the history of human consciousness, students travel internationally to major sites in Europe, Mexico, and the U.S. as part of the Topological Studies program during the three-year course of study. The residencies are experienced as successive geo-historical strata that set up a three-level (topological) critique. Each site is examined through the intersection between art and ideas, considered in terms of, 1) a historically designated period; 2) the contemporary situation as an extended moment in the site’s historical development; and 3) the inter-textual relation of each site to one another.
The sites and their designation listed below are visited sequentially during the three-year course of study. However, the narrative set up by the Topological Studies Curriculum is non-linear and open to multiple connections and interpretations, each site understood as staged moments, or chapters, in an ever-unfolding history of ideas and the history of the arts and culture. The topological Studies program needs to be considered together with themes developed in the core seminars and the Independent Studies, allowing students to develop a particular interest leading toward a dissertation topic.
Students take a total of five residencies during the three-year course of study. Residencies range in length from three days to three weeks. The longer residencies are scheduled in the summer and in early January. Check out the Academic Calendar for the current schedule. Future residency locations are subject to change.
Students experience the art and architecture testifying to the city’s development as a kingdom, a republic, and the most extensive empire of the Ancient Western world, as well as its subsequent role as the center of religious Christian power. At the same time, Rome is experienced as a multi-layered topological node where history is integrated into every aspect of everyday life and contemporary art coexists with the ancient vestiges of the ‘Eternal City.’
Site visits include the Roman Forum and Palatine Hill, Campidoglio and Michelangelo Square, Pantheon, Testaccio neighborhood and contemporary art galleries, MACRO (Museo d’Arte Contemporanea Roma), and other venues.
A medieval estate and 1100-acre working farm, Castello di Spannocchia blends feudal traditions with a vision for an ecologically sustainable future. While living and studying at Spannocchia, students conduct fieldwork in Siena and Florence, representing early middle-class capitalism based on an aristocratic/agrarian economy, and the center of Renaissance culture, respectively.
Site visits include the Lorenzetti frescoes at Palazzo Pubblico of Siena, Santa Maria della Scala Museum, Siena Cathedral, and Uffizi Museum, among others.
The city is considered from the point of view of an early crossroads of globalized markets, particularly as it relates to its long history as a maritime dominant power across the Eastern Mediterranean and the Levant. Against this background, we see how the Renaissance flows into Baroque ideas and aesthetics. This critique is set against the current role of the city as the capital of the global art scene during the Venice Biennale, which is the focus of students’ activities. Since 2015, IDSVA has participated in the Biennale Sessions program with dedicated seminars and lectures delivered by distinguished scholars. During their stay, students reside in the prestigious Vittore Branca Center at the Cini Foundation on the island of San Giorgio, where they have access to a world-class library and facilities.
Site visits include the Venice Biennale (including off-site pavilions), Fondazione Prada, Peggy Guggenheim Museum, Punta della Dogana, and Palazzo Grassi.
The rich heritage of classic Greek culture is experienced alongside the traces of the city’s Byzantine and Ottoman past, and the vibrant contemporary art scene. Understood as paradigmatic of both Western Metaphysics and what precedes it by way of so-called presocratic thought and preclassical art, that is, archaic knowledge, whose roots can be traced to Northern Africa and India, Athens provides a topological link to other IDSVA sites such as Rome, Berlin, and Marrakech.
Site visits include the Acropolis Museum, Ancient Agora and Museum, Ancient Delphi and Museum, Cycladic Art Museum, Benaki Museum, National Museum of Contemporary Art (EMST), studio visits, and gallery tours.
In Berlin, seminar discussions focus on Kant and Hegel, while architectural and museum studies look to bring out evidence of Kant’s neoclassicism and enlightenment aesthetics, as well as signs of divergence that would have resulted from Hegel’s reaction to Kant. Additionally, the Nazi era that informs Berlin’s history as well as post-WW2 and contemporary German philosophy and aesthetics are brought into play during seminar presentations.
Site visits include Alte und Neue Nationalgalerie, Gemäldegalerie, Boros Collection, Institute for Contemporary Art, Topographie des Terrors, Hamburger Bahnhof, studio visits, and gallery tours.
As arguably the capital of 20th-century art and still one of the liveliest centers for the production and display of art and culture in the world, New York City immerses students in the post-industrial urban experience while absorbing its unparalleled offerings of modern and contemporary art.
Site visits include the Guggenheim Museum, Whitney Museum of American Art, Metropolitan Museum, MoMA (Museum of Modern Art), MoMA PS1, New Museum, Studio Museum Harlem, Neue Galerie, Jewish Museum, the High Line, Chelsea art galleries, artist studios, and more.
Pre-Columbian indigenous cultures come alive in contemporary art, architecture, customs, and traditions. These still powerful aesthetic impulses inform our approach to the Mexican Revolution, the Muralist Movement (Orozco, Siqueiros, Rivera), Kahlo’s painting, Trotsky’s anti-Stalinist theories of art, and the contemporary after-effects of Spanish Colonization on the continent and the Caribbean basin.
Site visits include the Museo de Antropología, Museo Tamayo, Museo Casa de Leon Trotsky, Museo Frida Kahlo (Casa Azul), Museo Anahuacalli, Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo’s Museo Casa Estudio, Templo Mayor, Palacio Nacional, and the ancient archaeological site of Teotihuacán.
Over the past few years, IDSVA has been moving beyond its original Eurocentric focus in its ongoing critique of Western metaphysics. Our recently added Madrid and Marrakech residency centers on the event of the Arab conquest of the Iberian peninsula, the medieval Spanish “Convivencia” and cultural interactions between Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities exemplified by the city of Toledo, and the subsequent Reconquista and the Spanish expansion toward the Americas.
In Spain, site visits include the Prado Museum, the Reina Sofia, and other local cultural and religious institutions in Madrid and Toldeo.
The Moroccan perspective includes its indigenous Berber culture, the ancient Phoenician and Roman colonies as one of the great Mediterranean centers, and a long succession of various Muslim ruling dynasties while pointing to the French and Spanish control of this part of Northern Africa in the 19th and 20th centuries, whose traces are still visible in contemporary culture.
Sites visited include the Museum of African Contemporary Art Al Maaden, Medersa Ben Yousef, Museé Yves Saint Laurent and Jardin Majorelle, Berber Museum, Palais el Badii, Montresso Foundation, and Le Jardin Secret, among others.
"IDSVA is an immersive experience into a community of people truly excited to engage thoughtfully with one another, and to support one another, creatively and intellectually. It's given me a new level of confidence in articulating the relevance of what I do."
Margaret Coleman, Cohort '15
Executive Director at T.W. Wood Gallery and founding member of Art Shape Mammoth