 | |
Former name | California School of Design, Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, California School of Fine Arts |
|---|---|
| Type | Privateart school |
| Active | 1871 (1871)–2022 (2022) |
| Chairman | Lonnie Graham |
| Interim Chief Operating Officer | Mark Kushner |
| Students | 332 |
| Location | ,, United States 37°48′12″N122°25′02″W / 37.803456°N 122.417144°W /37.803456; -122.417144 |
| Campus | Urban 4 acres (1.6 ha) |
| Colors | Gray and clear |
| Mascot | Fog |
| Website | sfailegacyarchive |
| Designated | 1977[1] |
| Reference no. | 85 |
 | |
San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) was aprivatecollege ofcontemporary art inSan Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI was one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of theMississippi River. Approximately 220 undergraduates and 112 graduate students were enrolled in 2021.[2] The institution was accredited by theWestern Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) and theNational Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), and was a member of theAssociation of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD). The school closed permanently in July 2022.
The San Francisco Art Institute roots go back to 1871 with the formation of theSan Francisco Art Association—a small but influential group of artists, writers, and community leaders, most notably, led byVirgil Macey Williams and first presidentJuan B. Wandesforde, with B.P. Avery,Edward Bosqui, Thomas Hill, and S.W. Shaw, who came together to promote regional art and artists, and to establish a school and museum to further and preserve what they saw as a new and distinct artistic tradition which had developed in the relative cultural isolation and unique landscape of theAmerican West.
By 1874, the SFAA had 700 regular members and 100 life members and had raised sufficient funds and the necessary momentum to launch an art school, which was named the California School of Design (CSD). Painter Virgil Macy Williams, who had spent nearly ten years studying with master painters in Italy and had taught atHarvard College before coming to San Francisco,[3] became the school's first director and painting instructor—positions he held until his sudden death in 1886.[4] During Williams' tenure, the CSD developed a national reputation and amassed a significant collection of early California and western fine art as the foundation collected for a planned museum.
In 1893,Edward Searles donated theHopkins Mansion, one of the most palatial and elaborateVictorian mansions ever built, to theUniversity of California in trust for the SFAA for "instruction in and illustration of the fine arts, music and literature."[5] Named the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, it housed both the CSD's campus and SFAA's art collection. Through this new affiliation, students of the University of California were able to enroll in classes at the CSD.
In 1906, the devastating fire following theSan Francisco earthquake destroyed the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art building, and the CSD and SFAA facilities, records and art collection. At the time, the replacement value of the building and its contents was estimated at $2.573 million. However, the combined amount of numerous insurance policies yielded less than $100,000 for rebuilding. Nevertheless, within a year, the SFAA built a new but comparatively modest campus in the same location,[6] and adopted the name San Francisco Institute of Art.[7]
In 1916, the SFAA merged with the San Francisco Society of Artists and assumed directorship of the San Francisco Museum of Art at thePalace of Fine Arts, which was established to host the 1915 World's Fair,Panama–Pacific International Exposition. In addition, the school was renamed the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) to better reflect its mission to promote, develop and preserve regional art and culture. In 1926 the school moved to 800 Chestnut Street, which remained the school's main campus. In 1930 Mexican muralistDiego Rivera was hired to paintThe Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City, which is located in the student-directed art gallery.
During its first 60 years, influential artists associated with the school includedEadweard Muybridge, photographer and pioneer of motion graphics;Maynard Dixon, painter of San Francisco's labor movement and of the landscape of the West;Henry Kiyama, whoseFour Immigrants Manga was the firstgraphic novel published in the U.S.;Sargent Claude Johnson, one of the first African-American artists from California to achieve a national reputation;Louise Dahl-Wolfe, an innovative photographer whose work forHarper's Bazaar in the 1930s defined a new American style of "environmental"fashion photography;Gutzon Borglum, the creator of the large-scale public sculpture known asMount Rushmore;Rudolf Hess, German Expressionist painter and art critic,Emily Carr, Modernist Canadian painter well known for her work withindigenous culture,[8] and numerous others.
AfterWorld War II ended (1945) the school became a nucleus forAbstract Expressionism, with faculty includingClyfford Still,Ad Reinhardt,Mark Rothko,David Park,Elmer Bischoff, andClay Spohn. Although painting and sculpture remained the dominant mediums for many years, photography had also been among the course offerings. In 1945,Ansel Adams founded the school's photography department, which is considered the firstfine-art photography department in the United States. The faculty hired during this time includedDorothea Lange,Imogen Cunningham,Minor White,Edward Weston, andLisette Model.[9]Sidney Peterson began teaching film courses at the school in 1947. These were the first noncommercial film classes taught at any institution. The Film Department was officially established later, in 1969.[9] In 1949, DirectorDouglas MacAgy hosted the "Western Roundtable on Modern Art," a conference meant to discuss the state of art at that time. Participants included architectFrank Lloyd Wright, philosopherGregory Bateson, artistsMarcel Duchamp andMark Tobey, art historianRobert Goldwater, and composersDarius Milhaud andArnold Schoenberg.[9]
By the early 1950s, San Francisco'sNorth Beach had become theWest Coast center of theBeat Movement, and music, poetry, and discourse were an intrinsic part of artists' lives. Collage artistJess Collins renounced a career as aplutonium developer and enrolled at SFAI as a painting student. In 1953 he and his partner, poetRobert Duncan, along with painter Harry Jacobus, started the King Ubu Gallery, an importantalternative space for art, poetry, and music.
A distinctly Californian modern art soon emerged that fused abstraction, figuration, narrative, and jazz. SFAI facultyDavid Park,Elmer Bischoff,James Weeks,James Kelly,[10]Frank Lobdell,[11] andRichard Diebenkorn were now the leaders of theBay Area Figurative Movement, informed by their experience of seeing local museum exhibitions of work byEdvard Munch,Max Beckmann,Edgar Degas, andHenri Toulouse-Lautrec. Students at the school, includingDavid Simpson,John Hultberg,William T. Wiley,Robert Hudson, William Allan,Joan Brown,Manuel Neri,Carlos Villa, andWally Hedrick, continued the investigation of new ideas and new materials, many becoming the core of theFunk art movement.
Renamed San Francisco Art Institute in 1961, SFAI rejected the distinction betweenfine andapplied arts. SFAI stood at the forefront of recognizing an expanded vocabulary of art-making that hybridized many practices includingperformance,conceptual art, new media,graphic arts,typography, and political and socialdocumentary.Students in the early to mid-1960s included artistsRonald Davis,Robert Graham,Forrest Myers,Leo Valledor,Michael Heizer,Ronnie Landfield,Peter Reginato,Gary Stephan, and John Duff and in the late 1960sAnnie Leibovitz, who would soon begin photographing forRolling Stone magazine;Paul McCarthy, well known for his performance and sculpture works; andCharles Bigelow, who would be among the first typographers to design fonts for computers. AlumniRuth-Marion Baruch andPirkle Jones documented the early days of theBlack Panther Party in northern California.
In 1969, a new addition to the building byPaffard Keatinge-Clay added 22,500 sq ft (2,090 m2) of studio space, a large theater/lecture hall, an outdoor amphitheater, galleries, and a cafe.[12]
Installation art, video, music, and social activism continued to inform much of the work of faculty and students in the 1970s and 1980s. The faculty during this period includedGeorge Kuchar,Gunvor Nelson,Howard Fried,Paul Kos,Angela Davis,Kathy Acker,Robert Colescott, and many other influential artists and writers. Among the students were a number of performance artists and musicians, includingKaren Finley, whose performances challenged notions of femininity and political power, andPrairie Prince and Michael Cotten, who presented their first performance as the Tubes in the SFAI lecture hall, and became pioneers in the field ofmusic video. The school became a hub for thePunk music scene, with bands such asthe Mutants,the Avengers, andRomeo Void all started by SFAI students. Technology also became part of art practice: facultySharon Grace's Send/Receive project used satellite communications to create an interactive transcontinental performance, whileSurvival Research Laboratories, founded by studentMark Pauline, began staging large-scale outdoor performances of ritualized interactions among machines, robots, and pyrotechnics.
Since the 1990s the studio and classroom have become increasingly connected to the world via public art and community actions. As students at SFAI,Barry McGee, Aaron Noble, andRigo 23, among others, were part of the movement known as theMission School, taking their graffiti-inspired art to the streets and walls of the city. Faculty and students have created site-specific projects in locations from the San Francisco waterfront (Ann Chamberlain and Walter Hood's monument to theAbraham Lincoln Brigade) to the U.S. Consulate inTijuana, Mexico (a sculpture by artistPedro Reyes and SFAI students for the U.S. Department of State's Art in Embassies program). Organizations likeArtists' Television Access (ATA) andRoot Division, founded by alumni, and SFAI's City Studio program engage and educate local communities and cultivate a vital artistic ecosystem.[13]
The school's history was recognized in 2016, when its campus was listed on theNational Register of Historic Places.[14]
Due to financial mismanagement, declining enrollment, high real estate costs, and a reliance on income from campus property rentals, which was affected by theCOVID-19 pandemic,[15] the school announced on March 23, 2020, that it would stop accepting new students for the following fall semester.[16] The institute marked its 149th birthday on Thursday, March 26, 2020, shortly after failed merger talks.[17]
By March 2020, SFAI faced a financial crisis worsened by theCOVID-19 pandemic and debt from its expansion to a second campus atFort Mason. The school secured a sixty-year lease for the Fort Mason pier in 2015, but it did not meet fundraising goals for the renovation. This left the institution with about $19 million in debt resulting in a bank loan that was secured by the Russian Hill property including all of the school's other assets as collateral.[18] After negotiations with theUniversity of San Francisco to merger with SFAI failed the school announced it would no longer accept new enrollments for fall 2021. A temporary solution occurred when theUniversity of California—which owned the land beneath the school'sRussian Hill campus—agreed to take over the school's bank loan, giving a six-year repayment period.[18]
They briefly announced the cancellation of the fall 2020 semester[19] before reversing their decision and allowing for online and offline classes through the 2020–21 school year.[20] In July 2020, after securing $4 million in donations, the board and administration announced an agreement had been reached to retain all tenured faculty for the coming academic year, resulting in the continuation of courses for the following academic year and the reinstatement of the degree program for those within a year of graduation.[21]
In February 2022 theUniversity of San Francisco and SFAI announced that they were studying an acquisition of SFAI by USF;[22] however USF backed out of the deal in July. SFAI ceased its degree programs but announced it would remain as "a nonprofit organization to protect its name, archives, and legacy".[23] On July 16, 2022, the school closed permanently.[24]
On April 26, 2023, the San Francisco Art Institute filed for Chapter 7 liquidation.[25] The campus was put up for sale in late June, with an announcement thatDiego Rivera's mural in theDiego Rivera Gallery,The Making of a Fresco, Showing the Building of a City, with an assessed value of $50 million, would be sold as part of the property unless no satisfactory offer is received, in which case it might be available for separate sale.[26]
In late February 2024, a nonprofit corporation endowed byLaurene Powell Jobs bought the campus including the mural for approximately $30 million, with the stated intention of continuing its use as an arts institution.[27] It is planned to house theCalifornia Academy of Studio Arts, which will offer free one-year study residencies to 30 emerging visual artists.[28]
SFAI offeredBachelor of Arts (BA),Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA),Master of Arts (MA), andMaster of Fine Arts (MFA) degrees. SFAI also offered Low-Residency MFAs and Post-Baccalaureate certificates in Studio Art.
Founded byAnsel Adams in 1945, the Photography Department became the first program of its kind dedicated to exploring photography as a fine-art medium.[citation needed] Adams designed the school'sdarkrooms and attracted photographers for the original faculty, includingDorothea Lange,Imogen Cunningham,Minor White, andMorley Baer, who became Head of the Department after White's departure in 1953.
Throughout the SFAI Painting Department's history, it had been home to celebrated artists such asClyfford Still,Mark Rothko,Hassel Smith,Richard Diebenkorn,Jay DeFeo,Fred Martin,Bruce McGaw,Elmer Bischoff,David Park,David Simpson,Frank Lobdell,Roy De Forest,Joan Brown,Ronald Davis,William T. Wiley,Toba Khedoori,Barry McGee,Inez Storer andKehinde Wiley among others and was central to movements such asAbstract Expressionism,Bay Area Figuration,Color Field,California Funk, and theMission School.
Howard Fried founded the performance and video department (which later became New Genres) at the San Francisco Art Institute. In the late 1970s, a long-lost collection ofEadweard Muybridge photographs was found and an auction of the materials financed the creation of the department — and the purchase of two Portopak cameras. (More than a century before, the English artist had presented the first ever public showing of moving pictures on campus and apparently left something behind.)
Among the many artist musicians who studied at SFAI areJerry Garcia, guitarist inGrateful Dead;Dave Getz, drummer forBig Brother and the Holding Company andCountry Joe and the Fish;Prairie Prince ofThe Tubes;Debora Iyall ofRomeo Void; Freddy (aka Fritz) ofthe Mutants;Penelope Houston of the Avengers,Courtney Love, actress and rock musician;[29]Jonathan Holland of Tussle;Devendra Banhart.
In summer 2010, SFAI moved its housing program to two locations inNob Hill: Sutter Hall at 717 Sutter Street, and Abby Hall at 630 Geary Street. In spring 2020, the housing program was dissolved due to financial exigency.
Students were given direct access to exhibitions, lectures, symposia, films, and other unique interdisciplinary events. An integral part of campus life, such events connected students to the larger community of artists, art, and contemporary ideas. TheWalter and McBean Galleries (on the 800 Chestnut Street campus) house exhibitions, workshops, and other alternative and experimental avenues for presenting work by international contemporary artists. Students also had the opportunity to display their work in a number of spots on SFAI's two campuses, including theDiego Rivera Gallery.[30]
Former board member (1947–1957),Adaline Kent was a sculptor and alumni of the school. Upon her death in 1957, she bequeathed $10,000 for the establishment of an annual award for a promising California Artist.[31] Each year since 1957 the prize was awarded by the San Francisco Art Institute Artists' Committee. Winners includedRon Nagle (1978),[32]Wally Hedrick (1985),[33]Mildred Howard (1991),Clare Rojas (2004),[34] and as the final award,Scott Williams[35] (2005).
Caption written on photo: "Cal Art Institute, California Street, 1908." Text written underneath: "Building "California Art Institute." Present site of Mark Hopkins Hotel. Looking from Pine and Mason Street. Photo 1908." Photo shows the south side of the Art Institute, a two-story building with bulging bay windows and flying the American flag. The sloping hillside below the building shows the terracing and landscaping done when the old Mark Hopkins mansion occupied the site. This includes the rather Medieval looking gate at the corner in the foreground, the door of which is plastered with posters advertising Kolb Dill in "Higgledy Piggledy" on Monday, May 6. The roof of the Fairmont Hotel can be seen behind the Art Institute.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)Education inSan Francisco | ||
|---|---|---|
| Comp. high schools |  | |
| Alt/magnet high schools | ||
| Charter high schools | ||
| Elementary schools | ||
| Superintendents | ||
Independent schools | ||
| Secular private schools | ||
| Religious private schools |
| |
| Closed | ||
Tertiary education | ||
| Undergraduate | ||
| Creative and culinary arts | ||
| Graduate | ||
Other | ||
| Public libraries | ||
| Supplementary schools | ||
| State schools |
| |
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
