The UNLV Department of Art three-year Master of Fine Arts (MFA) program is studio-based and research-focused with an emphasis on creative practice, interdisciplinarity, community engagement, and professional development.
Throughout the program, students conduct practice and text-based research, presenting their work in studio visits, exhibitions, MFA Open Studios, and group critique with faculty, peers, visiting artists, curators, scholars, and community members.
As the culmination of the program, MFA Candidates present a public solo thesis exhibition project at the Donna Beam Gallery their final semester. The Midway is an Advancement to Candidacy degree requirement that graduate students present their second year in the program as a public, solo project in the Grant Hall Gallery.
This spring’s exhibition season features four solo exhibitions of artists exploring diverse mediums, themes, and identities. The public is welcome to attend exhibition openings, artist talks, and to drop by when the galleries are open.
For information, please follow UNLVArtDept on Facebook and @unlvtheear on Instagram. Also, please sign up for the UNLV Department of Art mailing list.
Complete Schedule
- Jan. 20 - 30: Iulia Filipov-Serediuc, MANEATER, Midway Exhibition
- March 2 - 13: Cameron Murrin, The Modern Trinity, Midway Exhibition
- March 23 - April 3: Dan Hernandez, My Culture's Disease Has Got The Best Of Me, Thesis Exhibition
- April 13 - 24: Kayla Lockwood, read the fine print, Thesis Exhibition
Thesis Talks:
- Wednesday April 22, 5:30 p.m.-6:30pm- Dan Hernandez and Kayla Lockwood, Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art Auditorium
Spring 2026 MFA Exhibitions
- Jan. 20-30, 2026: Iulia Filipov-Serediuc
- Reception: January 23, 2026 from 6 p.m.-9 p.m.
MANEATER
MANEATER investigates violence and destruction through a fictionalized flood, imagining a world after annihilation. Incorporating elements like foundry and installation, Filipov-Serediuc creates an environment that challenges the ethical and logical boundaries of implied violence.
- March 2 - 13, 2026: Cameron Murrin
- Closing Reception: March 13, 2026, 5 p.m.-8 p.m.
The Modern Trinity
The Modern Trinity is a quasi-religious installation that derives from architectural gravity and theological symbolism of Masaccio’s Renaissance fresco to reframe Roman Catholic iconography as a modern allegory for American public education, where authority and responsibility are rigidly structured yet spiritually hollow. Like the figures locked in Masaccio’s piece, Holy Trinity, teachers, administrators, and parents point outward in mutual blame as the foundations beneath them erode, leaving children suspended in a system that is supposed to offer nurture and care.
- March 23 - April 3, 2026: Dan45 Hernandez
My Culture's Disease Has Got The Best Of Me
- Closing reception: April 3 2026, 6 p.m.-9 p.m., musical performance at 8:30 p.m.
My Culture's Disease Has Got The Best Of Me, This installation explores a dynamic interplay between ceramics, wood, tissue paper and found objects to delve into the social and environmental influences that shape our identities. It challenges viewers to reflect on how consumerism, overstimulation, and the relentless consumption of mass media can distort our understanding of reality and ultimately blur the boundaries between truth and fiction.
read the fine print
- April 13 - 24, 2026: Kayla Lockwood
- Closing reception: April 24, 2026, 5-8pm
read the fine print is a two-floor installation that exposes how the polished visual language of midcentury domestic life—color, design, comfort, and order—functioned as a system of containment that naturalized hierarchy, surveillance, and exclusion. Moving from seductive surface to embodied consequence, the exhibition reveals the American Dream not as a historical ideal but as an ongoing structure whose terms of belonging, labor, and violence remain embedded in everyday life.
Locations
Donna Beam Gallery
Monday - Friday 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
(702) 895-3893
Alta Ham Fine Arts, room 145
Main Campus
4505 S. Maryland Pkwy.
Las Vegas , NV 89154
Grant Hall Gallery
Archie C. Grant Hall, 1st floor
Main Campus
4505 S. Maryland Pkwy.
Las Vegas , NV 89154
Marjorie Barrick Museum of Art
Tuesday - Saturday 10 a.m.-5 p.m.
(702) 895-3381
Main Campus
4505 S. Maryland Pkwy.
Las Vegas , NV 89154
Parking information is available on the UNLV website.
