The University of Nevada, Reno began operations at the University of Nevada, Reno at Lake Tahoe on July 1, 2022, after entering into an agreement to acquire Sierra Nevada University in Incline Village, Nevada. Through an interdisciplinary approach to artmaking, the program considers how we engage the material and social worlds of our respective environments—from personal, to political, to planetar
y. This experience and exploration of embodied place is central, encouraging students’ intricate relationship with their environment both here in the Tahoe Basin and within their home communities. The low-res MFA-IA program offers an alternative to a traditional MFA program, in both structure and philosophy. While we are a full-time program, we consciously designed the ten-day residencies knowing not everyone can take off for an entire summer or multiple weeks at a time. We know that dedicated, talented, driven artists, and thinkers have children, jobs, or other responsibilities that make it difficult for them to commit to a conventional on-ground MFA program.