San Francisco Art Institute

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

(Redirected from California School of Fine Arts)

San Francisco Art Institute

Established	1871
Type:	Private
President:	Chris Bratton
Location	San Francisco, California, USA
Website:	http://sfai.edu/

Founded in 1871, the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) is one of the U.S.’s older and more prestigious schools of higher education in contemporary art. The school is located in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California, United States. SFAI is a private, non-profit institution accredited by WASC and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.

The San Francisco Art Institute, with a view of Telegraph Hill

1 Academic programs
- 1.1 School of Studio Practice
- 1.2 School of Interdisciplinary Studies
2 History
- 2.1 Photography
- 2.2 Music
3 Notable current faculty
4 Notable former faculty
5 Notable Alumni and Former Students
6 References
7 External links

SFAI offers Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, Bachelor of Fine Arts, and Master of Fine Arts degrees and Post-Baccalaureate certificates. SFAI's current Dean of Academic Affairs is curator Okwui Enwezor.

The School of Studio Practice consists of the traditional departments of Painting, Sculpture, Film, Photography, Design+Technology, Printmaking, and New Genres.

Founded in 2006, SFAI's School of Interdisciplinary Studies offers BA and MA degrees in History and Theory of Contemporary Art, Urban Studies, and Exhibition and Museum Studies (MA only). It also houses four research and teaching centers: Public Practice, Media Culture, Art+Science, and Word, Text, and Image.

The San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) was founded in 1871 and it opened the San Francisco School of Design in February 1874 under the direction of landscape painter Virgil Macey Williams. In 1893 the name was changed to California School of Design and the association affiliated with the University of California and inherited the mansion of Mark Hopkins on Nob Hill. Its museum functions continued under the title of the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art.

The fire following the 1906 San Francisco earthquake destroyed both the mansion and the school. A year later, the school was rebuilt on the site of the old mansion and renamed the San Francisco Institute of Art. In 1916 the SFAA merged with the San Francisco Society of Artists and assumed directorship of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, then located in the Palace of Fine Arts, a relic of the Panama-Pacific International Exposition. The school was also renamed the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). In 1926 the school was moved to its present location at 800 Chestnut Street in San Francisco. In 1961 the school was finally renamed to its modern name, the San Francisco Art Institute.

In 1969, a new addition to the building by Paffard Keatinge Clay added 22,500 sq. feet of studio space, a large theater/lecture hall, outdoor amphitheater, galleries, and cafe.^[1]

Founded by Ansel Adams in 1945, the Photography Department was the first program of its kind dedicated to exploring photography as a fine art medium.

In 1966, the SFAI organized an exhibition of rock and roll posters. In the late 1970s and early 1980s, SFAI was one of the centers of the San Francisco punk rock and new wave music scene. Among the many artist musicians who studied at SFAI are Jerry Garcia, guitarist in Grateful Dead; Dave Getz, drummer for Big Brother and the Holding Company and Country Joe and the Fish; Prairie Prince and Michael Cotten of the Tubes; Debora Iyall and Frank Zinkavage of Romeo Void; Freddy (aka Fritz) of the Mutants; Penelope Houston of the Avengers, Nathan Burazer and Jonathan Holland of Tussle; Cliff Hengst and Scott Hewicker of Troll; and Devendra Banhart.