 
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
37 South Wabash
Chicago, Illinois 60603-3103
Telephone: 312-899-5100 •
URL: www.artic.edu
Recognized as an innovator in the arts since its inception more than 100 years ago, and internationally esteemed as a school of art and design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago offers a comprehensive college education centered in the visual and related arts.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's primary purpose is to foster the conceptual and technical education of the artist in a highly professional and studio-oriented environment. Believing that the artist's success is dependent on both creative vision and technical expertise, the School encourages excellence, critical inquiry, and experimentation.
The teaching of studio art, the complementary programs in art history, theory, and criticism and liberal arts, the visiting artists, and the collections and exhibitions of one of the world's finest museums all contribute to the variety, the challenge, and the resonance of the educational experience.
Graduate and undergraduate students and a superb faculty of artists and scholars work in close proximity, sharing resources and establishing a forum for critiquing and refining technical abilities and conceptual concerns.
The museum galleries, the graduate studios and seminar rooms, the libraries, undergraduate studios, school galleries, and classrooms create a lively and stimulating environment that facilitates the exchange of ideas among students at all levels.
Why the School? Because an education of this sort is rare and, for the artist, irreplaceable.
— Tony Jones, President, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
History of the School & Museum
The Art Institute of Chicago was founded by a small group of artists in 1866. Their purpose was to provide an excellent education in the studio arts in conjunction with exhibition opportunities. The Art Institute of Chicago's collections, which now constitute some of the finest museum holdings anywhere, began as the Chicago Academy of Design with a modest gift of plaster casts from the French government.
The small art school, which expanded from one rented facility within the city to another and was burned out of its first permanent home by the Chicago Fire, incorporated as the Chicago Academy of Fine Art in 1879, and changed its name to The Art Institute of Chicago in 1882. The museum and School moved into a building erected for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893.
The School has become one of the largest accredited independent schools of art and design in the country, and since 1976 has occupied its own modern facilities adjoining the museum and overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan. An accredited college of the visual and related arts, the School provides degrees at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The School offers a broad and dynamic spectrum of study including art and technology; arts administration; art history, theory and criticism; art education and art therapy; fashion design; filmmaking; historic preservation and interior architecture; painting and drawing; performance; photography; printmaking; sculpture; sound; time arts (time-based media); video; visual communication; and writing. A comprehensive program in liberal arts emphasizes the pivotal role that humanities, mathematics and sciences play in artists' development. The School also serves as a national resource for issues related to the position and importance of the arts in society.
The School of the Art Institute Urban Campus In 1988, having outgrown its main facility at 280 S. Columbus Drive, the School purchased the Champlain Building at 37 S. Wabash, also designed by Holabird and Roche. With increasing requests for on-campus housing, the School acquired its first residence hall, named Wolberg Hall, with the purchase in 1992 of the 112 S. Michigan Ave. building, a multi-purpose facility providing a combination of residential, studio and academic functions under one roof. In 1994, the White Tower Building at 847 W. Jackson Blvd., was purchased to house Gallery 2, an off-campus exhibition space, and to provide space for School-wide exhibitions and storage for both the Museum and the School. As on-campus housing requests continued to grow, the Chicago Building was acquired in 1996 and a new residence facility is scheduled to open fall of 2000 at 162 North State Street. Each of these residences are minutes away from classes at the School's three Loop buildings as well as the Art Institute and many other cultural institutions.
During the last three years, the School continued to build a campus with the addition of gallery space and a permanent home for the thesis show at 847 W. Jackson, additional graduate studios and office space at 29 S. Wabash and the Chicago Building, a second residence hall at 7 W. Madison.
School's Growth a Success The School's successes have not gone unnoticed. Enrollment is at an all time high. U.S. News and World Report has listed the School's graduate program as the top graduate school in the nation in the area of fine art and design (the fourth year in a row that the School has received this recognition) and the School received a second place ranking at the undergraduate level. These ratings are compiled based upon peer review.
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