The New York Academy of Art is pleased to announce its annual MFA Thesis Exhibition, showcasing work from the 49 members of the graduating class of 2016. The show features drawing, painting and sculpture created in the Academy’s tradition of highly skilled, conceptually aware figurative and representational art. The exhibition opens May 17 at the Academy, and is on view until May 28, 2016.

The Academy is the nation’s leading program in figurative art; Academy students are intensively trained in a rigorous two-year graduate program by a dynamic faculty including senior critics Steven Assael, Will Cotton, Vincent Desiderio, Eric Fischl, Judy Fox, Kurt Kauper and Jenny Saville. Recent MFA graduates from the Academy include: Ali Banisadr MFA 2007 (represented by Sperone Westwater Gallery; permanent collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art); Aleah Chapin MFA 2012 (represented by Flowers Gallery; first American woman to win the National Portrait Gallery’s BP Portrait Award) and Peter Simon Mühlhäußer MFA 2009 (represented at the 2013 Venice Biennale).

The graduating class of 2016 includes artists from fifteen nations, including Colombia, Brazil, Switzerland, China, Peru, Iran, Chile, Pakistan, Mexico, the United Kingdom, and Russia. The artists have exhibited in group and solo shows in Paris, Vancouver, New York, London, Rome and Florence, are represented in the permanent collections of the British Consulate General and the Brooklyn Museum, and have been featured in The New York Times, ArtNews, The Wall Street Journal and Hyperallergic.

Founded in 1982 by artists, scholars and patrons of the arts, including Andy Warhol, the New York Academy of Art is a graduate school which combines intensive technical training in drawing, painting and sculpture with active critical discourse. Academy students are taught traditional methods and techniques and encouraged to use these skills to make vital contemporary art.