New York Professional Outreach Program

NYPOP was founded in 1990 to introduce UMASS art students to the gatekeepers of the New York Professional scene. The program is structured to show our students various paths to professional careers. Each semester we invite NYC artists, critics and curators, to speak from their personal experience about their work in the context of building an art career. We also set aside ample time each visit for the students to view exhibitions and other cultural events in NYC.

Each semester NYPOP conducts two seminars. Each seminar has 12-15 upper division under graduate and graduate students. Students can enroll in these seminars numerous times. We meet on the Amherst campus for the first threeweeks of the semester. Then we begin a series of eight visits to NYC. On alternate weeks.each group makes four trips per semester. The NYPOP rental van leaves Amherst Friday at 8:00 am. and returns by 7:00 pm. on Saturday. The final three weeks of the semester are spent on the Amherst campus where we conduct final discussions of the students' work from the semester.

The goal of NYPOP is to facilitate an understanding of the realities and choices available to emerging artists. Those lessons are not only valuable to artists thinking of a NYC career, but can be generally applied to any location where an emerging artist is working to build their career.

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