Learning to See Inside the World's Leading Art and Design Schools

The definitive resource on how nationally known artists and designers teach—and what students learn—in the world’s top BFA and MFA programs.


Learning to See is an engaging and profound account of how professional artists and designers create and how they teach others to do it. Keith Sawyer, a leading creativity researcher, spent over ten years interviewing a hundred professors who’ve taught in 50 different colleges, universities, and institutes. He also interviewed students to learn about the personal transformation they go through as they learn to see and think like successful creative professionals. Learning to See describes project assignments and studio class sessions in over 20 different disciplines, revealing the shared essence of art and design.

Learning to See tells the stories of the professional artists and designers who teach in BFA and MFA programs throughout the U.S., including top schools in New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles. These articulate and experienced educators share their insights about how to guide younger artists and designers to realize their full creative potential. In the best BFA and MFA programs, students learn to see things they couldn’t see before, and they learn to think in new ways. In Learning to See, you meet professors and students in over 20 different art and design disciplines—from painting and sculpture to graphic design and architecture. By reading what they say in their conversations and their classrooms, you learn that becoming an artist or designer is not about learning to draw or sew or weld—it is about learning to see.

This book is for anyone who wants to better understand how professional artists and designers see, think, and make.

Keith Sawyer is one of the world’s leading creativity researchers. He has published twenty books and over one hundred scientific articles on jazz, theater, and visual arts. His bestselling books include Group Genius and Zig Zag. Sawyer is the Morgan Distinguished Professor in Educational Innovations at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.