San Francisco Art Institute Totally Explained

Everything about San Francisco Art Institute totally explained

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.

Academic programs

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.

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

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.

History

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 Keating Clay added of studio space, a large theater/lecture hall, outdoor amphitheater, galleries, and cafe.

Photography

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.

Music

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.

Housing

SFAI maintained a small student housing program in the MacArthur neighborhood of the Presidio of San Francisco from 2002 to 2007. Students were housed primarily in semi-furnished townhouse apartments built in the 1960s with space for approximately 45 students. During the 2006/2007academic year, some apartments in the Baker Beach neighborhood were used with space for an additional 20 students. In August of 2007, SFAI transitioned to a more traditional student housing model and converted a 1907 hotel in Union Square to an unnamed residence hall. The Union Square property could house up to 125 students. Prior to 2002, students typically found housing on their own with some guidance from the institution, though at one time SFAI owned a small number of apartment units near its Russian Hill campus.

Notable current faculty

Linda Connor, large-format photographer
Trisha Donnelly
Okwui Enwezor
Sharon Grace
Renee Green
Hou Hanru
Lynn Hershman Leeson
Reagan Louie
George Kuchar, filmmaker
Tony Labat, performance artist
Jane McGonigal, game theorist
John Roloff
Henry Wessel, Jr., one of the New Topography photographers
Griff Williams

Notable former faculty

Kathy Acker

Ansel Adams, landscape photographer, founded the photography department in 1945

Imogen Cunningham, portrait photographer

Angela Davis (joined 1976)

Drew Daniel, member of Matmos

Dorothea Lange, influential documentary photographer, "Migrant Mother"

Lydia Lunch

Frederick Meyer, founder of the California College of the Arts (1907)

Eadweard Muybridge, inventor of the Zoopraxiscope (1880)

Charlemagne Palestine

Sidney Peterson, film director, initiated first film courses at SFAI (1947)

M.C. Schmidt, member of Matmos

Clyfford Still, Abstract expressionist, Color field painter (1946)

Dean Roy Ascott (1975-78) pioneer (External Link

) of art involving cybernetics and telematics, and founder of the Planetary Collegium

Notable Alumni and Former Students

Lance Acord, cinematographer (2003)

Michael Arcega (1999)

Devendra Banhart, musician

Gutzon Borglum, creator of Mt. Rushmore (1927)

Joan Brown, painter

Kathryn Bigelow, film director

Emily Carr, painter

Enrique Chagoya, printmaker

Nate Conrad

Michael Cotten (1971)

Ronald Davis, painter

Richard Diebenkorn, American abstract and figurative artist (1946/7)

John Duff, sculptor

Karen Finley, performance artist

Fritz Fox, filmmaker, lead singer and songwriter of The Mutants

Jerry Garcia, member of the Grateful Dead

Robert Graham (sculptor)

Percy Gray, painter

Don Ed Hardy, tattoo artist

Michael Heizer, earth artist, sculptor

Mike Henderson, painter, blues musician

Penelope Houston, musician, lead singer and songwriter of The Avengers

Grace Carpenter Hudson, painter of Pomo people

David Ireland

Rea Irvin, art editor of The New Yorker

Sargent Johnson, sculptor (1919-1923)

Alex Kahn, pageant performance artist, chief designer for New York's Village Halloween Parade

Molly Katzen, author of the Moosewood Cookbook

Eduardo Kingman, master Latin American painter

Greg Kulz tattoo artist

Laura Kipnis, author, media critic, professor at Northwestern University

Henry Kiyama published The Four Immigrants Manga, the first graphic novel published in the U.S. (1931)

Asya Komarova, photographer

Ronnie Landfield, painter

Courtney Love, actress and rock musician

Annie Leibovitz, photographer (1973)

Brendan Lott, painter (2001)

Arthur Frank Mathews, painter

Paul McCarthy (1968)

Darrell McClure cartoonist

Barry McGee (aka TWIST) painter/graffiti artist (1991)

Frosty Myers, sculptor

Errol Morris Documentary Filmmaker - attended in 1973

Manuel Neri, sculptor (1958)

Win Ng, co-founder of Taylor & Ng (1971)

Catherine Opie, photographer

Mark Pauline, founder and director of Survival Research Labs

Lourdes Portillo, filmmaker

Peter Reginato, sculptor

Jason Rhoades, sculptor

Katherine Sherwood, Guggenheim Fellow (2005)

Jeremy Arlo Simmons, painter (2003)

Gary Stephan, painter

James Swinnerton, cartoonist

Stephanie Syjuco, (1991)

Christopher Vena, painter (2002)

Carlos Villa, painter

Leo Valledor, painter

William T. Wiley, Guggenheim Fellow

Griff Williams, painter, founder of Gallery 16 and Urban Digital Color

Robin Winters, sculptor, painter

Jonathan Yegge, performance artist, Catholic theologian (expelled 2000) (2001)Further Information

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