It’s 2011: Amer­i­ca is in a deep reces­sion and Occu­py Wall Street is esca­lat­ing. But at the elite Wrynn Col­lege of Art, stu­dents paint and sculpt in a rar­efied bub­ble. Louisa Arce­neaux is a thought­ful, obser­vant nine­teen-year-old when she trans­fers to Wrynn as a schol­ar­ship stu­dent, but she soon finds her­self adrift in an envi­ron­ment that prizes nov­el­ty over beau­ty. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters is Louisa’s unex­pect­ed attrac­tion to her charis­mat­ic room­mate, Kari­na Pio­ntek, the preter­nat­u­ral­ly gift­ed but mer­cu­r­ial daugh­ter of wealthy art col­lec­tors. Grad­u­al­ly, Louisa and Kari­na are drawn into an intense sen­su­al and artis­tic rela­tion­ship, one that forces them to con­front their deep­est desires and fears. But Kari­na also can’t shake her fas­ci­na­tion with Pre­ston Utley, a senior and anti-cap­i­tal­ist Inter­net provo­ca­teur, who is pub­licly feud­ing with vis­it­ing pro­fes­sor and polit­i­cal painter Robert Berg­er – a once-con­tro­ver­sial fig­ure­head seek­ing to regain relevance.

When Pre­ston con­cocts an explo­sive hoax, the fates of all four artists are upend­ed as each is unex­pect­ed­ly thrust into the cut­throat New York art world. Now all must strug­gle to find new iden­ti­ties in art, in soci­ety, and among each oth­er. In the process, they must find either their most authen­tic terms of life – of suc­cess, fail­ure, and joy – or risk los­ing them­selves altogether.

With a can­ny, crit­i­cal eye, Sirens & Mus­es over­turns notions of class, mon­ey, art, youth, and a gen­er­a­tion’s fight to own their future.