San Francisco Art Institute
From Free net encyclopedia
The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) is an accredited undergraduate and graduate school of contemporary art located in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California, United States.
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Academic programs
SFAI offers BA, MA, BFA, and MFA degrees and Post-Baccalaureate certificates.
School of Studio Practice
The School of Studio Practice consists of the traditional departments of Painting, Sculpture, Film, Photography, Design+Technology, Printmaking, and New Genres.
School of Interdisciplinary Studies
The School of Interdisciplinary Studies has four research and teaching centers: Public Practice, Media Culture, Art+Science, and Word, Text, and Image.
History
The San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) was founded in 1871 and it opened the San Francisco School of Design (later the California School of Design) in 1874. It was directed by landscape painter Virgil Macey Williams. In 1893 SFAA and CSD moved to the former mansion of Mark Hopkins and was renamed 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 school was renamed the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). The CSFA moved to its current location at 800 Chestnut Street. In 1961 the school was finally renamed to its modern name, the San Francisco Art Institue.
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.
Music
In 1966, the SFAI organized an exhibition of rock and roll posters. In 1978, SFAI was one of the centers of the Punk rock music scene.
Notable faculty and alumni
- Current faculty member Linda Connor, large-format photographer
- Current faculty member Debra Bloomfield, photographer and ex-wife of photographer Richard Misrach
- Current faculty member Henry Wessel, Jr., one of the New Topography photographers
- Faculty member Ansel Adams, landscape photographer, founded the photography department in 1945
- Faculty member Eadweard Muybridge, inventor of the Zoopraxiscope (1880)
- Faculty member Imogen Cunningham, portrait photographer
- Faculty member Dorothea Lange, influential documentary photographer, "Migrant Mother"
- Faculty member Frederick Meyer, founder of the California College of the Arts (1907)
- Alumnus Gutzon Borglum, creator of Mt. Rushmore (1927)
- Alumnus Henry Kiyama published The Four Immigrants Manga, the first graphic novel published in the U.S. (1931)
- Student Richard Diebenkorn, American Abstract/Figurative Artist (1946/7)
- Faculty Sidney Peterson, film director, initiated first film courses at SFAI (1947)
- Student Jerry Garcia, of The Grateful Dead (1958)
- Alumna Annie Leibovitz, official photographer for Rolling Stone magazine (1973)
- Student Paul McCarthy (1968)
- Student Michael Cotten (1971)
- Alumnus Win Ng, co-founder of Taylor & Ng (1971)
- Faculty member Angela Davis (joined 1976)
- Alumna Kathryn Bigelow, film director
- Alumnus Lance Acord, film director (2003)
- Alumnus William Wiley, Guggenheim Fellow (2001)
- Alumna Katherine Sherwood, Guggenheim Fellow (2005)
- Student Jonathan Yegge, performance artist, theologian (2000)