Building Empathy: Hunter MFA Graduates Face an Altered Landscape

When the world as we know it screeches to an abrupt halt, the impact suffered by each of us is very specific. For the students in the Hunter College MFA Program in Studio Art, the closures brought on by COVID-19 pandemic meant no full-scale artmaking or access to their studios for over five months. Students set to graduate this past spring experienced this loss most keenly. After three years of working towards a thesis exhibition—the culminating event of our program—graduating candidates were stuck in limbo, not knowing whether or not anyone would lay eyes on their debut into the art world. A public MFA program located in the heart of New York City, we were one of the first departments in all of CUNY to reopen its facilities over the summer under strict safety protocols. We did this with the unwavering support of Jennifer J. Raab, the President J. Raab, who has always understood, and bravely embraced, the importance of the arts at Hunter as well as New York City. Our students returned to their studios in late July, but the world as we know it had radically changed. While it is too soon to see how our society will address the structural inequities laid bare by the pandemic and the abhorrent police killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and others, enforced isolation has given all of us time to reflect on the necessity of this cultural reckoning. Often, artists lead the charge, as is evidenced by the nineteen students in Hunter’s MFA class of Spring 2020. One of our students, Amra Causevic, said it perhaps most clearly: ‘Now I’m trying to merge the old self with my new self … I think it's about community and building empathy.’