School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University

10/23/2026

Rachel Perry, Diploma ’99, Fifth Year Certificate ‘01, has won five MacDowell Fellowships, a residency at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, and has had her work critiqued in The New Yorker, The New York Times, and Hyperallergic. Yet, when she first started out, Perry lacked the courage to go to art school and felt like an imposter. https://bit.ly/4saYywv

10/20/2026

Congratulations to the 2026 SMFA at Tufts Traveling Fellows! These 10 alumni artists will receive funding to pursue creative exploration around the world, continuing a tradition of artistic discovery that began more than 125 years ago. https://bit.ly/4dJER98

10/16/2026

150 years of SMFA, now in an interactive timeline! Part-Time Lecturer Jeff Soyk has brought the school's history to life with archival images, videos, and even some dripping paint. Best viewed on laptop, desktop and tablet screens. https://bit.ly/4zs3Gie

10/06/2026

In Flora and Fauna, students create anthotypes using pigments extracted from plants and other natural materials. They create light-sensitive emulsions, expose their images in sunlight and watch as the colors transform, revealing their artwork.

10/02/2026

A new cross-university collaboration between SMFA and Biomedical Engineering allows us to see biomedical engineering research through artists' eyes.

Tuberculosis bacteria committing a museum heist. A stem cell balancing on a spinal cord tightrope. No, these aren’t scenes from the animated, biology-inspired

09/28/2026

As SMFA grew, its pedagogy did too. The push and pull between the old and the new, the structured and the experimental, and even the competing tropes of the starving artist and the financially secure creative that make the school’s history so poignant and its future so clear. https://bit.ly/3VL8vEA

Women's life drawing class, circa 1890s. School of the Museum of Fine Arts records, UA133. Tufts Archival Research Center (TARC), Medford, MA.

09/24/2026

As we welcome our new graduate students to campus, we want to take a moment to reflect and celebrate the MFA class of 2026 as they forge new paths as professional artists, educators, and innovators. We wish them the best of luck!

09/22/2026

Every day is Bessie Day around here, but today it’s official. Happy World Rhino Day! 🦏

Photography by Alonso Nichols for Tufts University

09/18/2026

We can't stop smiling. Thank you to everyone (students, alumni, staff, monsters, cheerleaders, etc.) who made SMFA's 150th celebration and the Looking Back reception so special.

Video by Sophy Zhu for Tufts University

09/17/2026

The family and friends of Brenda Star, BFA '56 MFA 77' and former SMFA faculty member, are endowing the Steven and Brenda Star Memorial Scholarship to give the next generation of aspiring Boston-area students the opportunity to pursue a life in the arts.

https://bit.ly/471odOi

Images courtesy of the artist's family.