Summary
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is a private art school affiliated with the Art Institute of Chicago. Tracing its history back to 1866, SAIC has been accredited since 1936 by the Higher Learning Commission and by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design since 1944. It has also been a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design since 1991 and is also accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board.
History
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago has been at the forefront of art education for more than a century and a half, fostering critical thinking, rigorous investigation, and playful creativity. The School was among the first to embrace self-directed study across disciplines and their alumni have gone on to shape the world as artists, designers, and scholars. Additionally their encyclopaedic art museum and civic partnerships inspire millions both in Chicago and around the globe.
Founded by artists for artists, SAIC has a rich history of innovation in art and design education. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago has its roots in the Chicago Academy of Design, which local artists established in 1866 in rented rooms on Clark Street. It was financed by member and patron donations. Four years later, the school moved into its own building on Adams Street, which was destroyed in the Great Chicago Fire of 1871.
Because of the school’s financial and managerial problems after this loss, business leaders in 1878 formed a board of trustees and founded the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. They expanded its mission beyond education and exhibitions to include collecting. In 1882, the academy was renamed the Art Institute of Chicago. The banker Charles L. Hutchinson served as its elected president until his death in 1924.
In keeping with the academic origins of the institution, a research library was constructed in 1901; eight major expansions for gallery and administrative space have followed, with the latest being the Modern Wing, which opened in 2009. The permanent collection has grown from plaster casts to nearly 300,000 works of art in fields ranging from Chinese bronzes to contemporary design and from textiles to installation art. Together, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the museum of the Art Institute of Chicago are now internationally recognized as two of the leading fine-arts institutions in the United States.
The school grew to become among the “most influential” art schools in the United States. Walter E. Massey served as president, from 2010 until July 2016. He was succeeded by Elissa Tenny, who formerly served as the school’s provost. In 2024, Tenny was succeeded by Jiseon Lee Isbara, a fiber artist and academic administrator. Today, it’s a unique environment where students are redefining creative making and civic engagement.
Courses
Fashion Design, BFA
SAIC’s Fashion department offers one of the most intense, interdisciplinary fashion design programs in Chicago, where students emerge as a skilled fashion designer with an awareness of the social, political, and technological forces shaping the 21st century. Within the Fashion program, students will explore the most progressive achievements in the world of dress and fashion through the institute’s Fashion Resource Center, a hands-on collection of late 20th- and 21st-century designer garments representing extreme innovation.
The undergraduate Fashion pathway curriculum consists of a scaffolded sequence of co-taught design and construction courses over the course of the sophomore, junior, and senior levels, providing a firm foundation in drawing, draping, pattern-making, and garment construction. In courses that combine historical research with contemporary explorations, students transcend the traditional boundaries of fashion to examine clothing as it relates to lifestyle, performance, display, costume, and art.
Fashion, Body and Garment Admissions Information, MFA
The Master of Fine Arts in Fashion, Body and Garment provides a creative and intellectual context in which the nature and potentiality of fashion is closely examined and reimagined. Uniquely situated within a vibrant contemporary school of art and design, this program builds on the connections and relationships between art and fashion that have been evolving in the past century and that reach an unprecedented level in contemporary practices today. Through a combination of dedicated design studios, topical seminars, self-directed research, technical labs, design history, theory courses, and a wide range of elective options such as performance, film, new media, writing, and sculpture, students explore a breadth of possibilities, yet achieve an in-depth focus within their individual practice.
Fiber and Material Studies, BFA
The Department of Fiber and Material Studies provides students with an interdisciplinary study of fiber, materials, and processes that incorporate different art-making approaches, including: textile construction, sculpture, installation, action, and craft. Research-based, concept-driven, and resolutely engaged with hands-on making, the program educates students to make ambitious, complex, and innovative contemporary art.
BFA students considering a concentration in Fiber and Material Studies, are encouraged to enrol in beginning-level classes such as Introduction to Fiber and Material Studies, Drawn to Print, Woven Structure Basics, Paper-making I, To Dye For, and Stitch I. From there, faculty will help them determine the selection of upper-level courses best suited to their practice and interests. Those classes include Os + 1s Jacquard Weaving, Print Into Sculpture: 3D Screens, The Unpainted Picture, Time, Material, and the Everyday, Micro-Macro: Artist Research, and advanced weaving, print, dye, and paper-making classes.
Students and their peers will develop 2D and 3D work through concerns of hands-on making, concept and content articulated on the surface, in the structure, and through mixed media (crossover disciplines). Alumnus Bryana Bibbs is the founder of The We Were Never Alone Project, a series of weaving workshops for survivors of domestic violence. During the workshop, Bibbs teaches participants a basic plain weave and gives them space to share their stories. She sees these workshops as part of a tradition of community spaces that have been centered around knitting.
Film, Video, New Media, and Animation, BFA
The Film, Video, New Media, and Animation department encourages experimentation with radical form and content. Their commitment to deep interdisciplinarity crosses a broad spectrum, including: cinema, animation, time-based installation, and new media. Students have access to state-of-the-art filming, editing, and production equipment plus a large list of courses to address their individual artistic needs.
The department reaches beyond conventional approaches of moving image media and animation programs. Students concentrating their studies at SAIC investigate the possibilities of: Nonfiction-documentary and narrative film and video; Moving-image installation; Hand-drawn and digital 2D and 3D animation; Interactive art, VR, AR, and web-based projects; and Media art histories. Students invent interdisciplinary pathways to produce hybrid works that expand traditional forms to create acts of artistic exploration that the department supports.
The work of faculty is represented in museums and galleries; presented at major international festivals of film and media; screened in art cinemas and at music and performance venues; embraced in community-based projects; and featured in arts publications. Students take classes offered by these working practitioners and it is through this process that they learn to research, invent, and explore. The seminars, production classes and art history ensure that students receive in-depth knowledge relevant to moving-image art making.
Studio courses follow disciplinary paths of cinema, video art, new media art, and animation—experimental 3D and 2D. These classes provide rigorous technical training through sequences in each path that advance practical and critical skills, connecting your work to wider interdisciplinary concerns. Courses engage historical, critical, aesthetic, cultural, and technological issues by making experimental media art. The program is consistently ranked among the top five graduate Film/Animation Schools in the nation by U.S. News and World Report.
Writing, BFA
The Bachelor of Fine Arts in Writing degree emphasizes a process-based approach to creative writing—one in which students experience writing across genre and in interdisciplinary and hybrid modes. Integrated into SAIC’s studio departments, students explore the relationship between language and visual art by connecting writing to comics, graphic novels, artist’s books, painting, performance, film, sound, and gallery installations.
Students participate in either or both the BFA thesis exhibition and the BFA in Writing reading. They gain understanding of editorial and production work through involvement in Mouth, the annual BFAW student-run literary journal, or Fnewsmagazine, the institute’s award-winning student newspaper. Students are also encouraged to attend the workshops by the Writing Department sponsored Visiting Writer and Artist Lectures, special events such as Publishing Panel presentations, and MFAW Graduate Lectures.
Historic Preservation, MSc
The Master of Science in Historic Preservation program at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago is a two-year, graduate curriculum that prepares students for careers in revitalising our built environment. Courses are offered in four areas: Architectural design; Physical conservation; Architectural and social history; and Preservation planning. Each graduate student completes two years of coursework in each of these areas as part of the required curriculum.
The 60 credit-hour Historic Preservation program requires students to undertake an internship. The 210-hour internship with a preservation agency, conservator, restoration architect, or designer enables students to work on historically significant sites and to learn firsthand the latest preservation techniques. SAIC’s Historic Preservation program has extensive international contacts and offers students significant overseas study opportunities. The program’s balanced curriculum and emphasis on real-world experience prepare students for professional opportunities.
Architecture Degree with a Track in Interior Architecture, MFA
SAIC offers two Master of Architecture programs with a Track in Interior Architecture. Both are professional degrees accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board. Unique among architecture graduate degrees, SAIC’s MArch with a track in interior architecture options recognize and underscore the significance of architectural design where form, structure and enclosure are considered in proximity to materials, objects, human needs, and experience. Housed within an interdisciplinary educational community, the degrees provide an intellectually stimulating context for exploring the social, cultural, and technological implications of architectural spaces designed from the inside out.
Interior Architecture is a growing professional field where architects have an increasing impact. In the MArch programs, we teach through hands-on inquiry, experimentation and exploration to develop the skills and critical knowledge necessary for the development of new spatial ideas and invention in the field of interior architecture. The curriculum is centered on the series of project-based studios supported by courses in building structures, building technology, professional practice, and electives in architectural history and theory.
MArch students are encouraged to develop and expand their practice by taking courses in other departments across SAIC, as well as by applying to AIADO’s External Partnership courses. In their final year, students complete a rigorous comprehensive design studio and pursue a self-directed design thesis under the supervision of faculty in the department.
Comics, MFA
SAIC’s Master of Fine Arts in Studio Comics program offers an interdisciplinary, innovative pathway for aspiring comic artists. Recognizing that developing narrative comics is a multi-faceted art, the curriculum provides students with the opportunity to work across painting, drawing, writing, reading, and narrative expression. Foundational Comics Seminars, combined with student-selected studio electives and faculty advisors, allow students to experiment while developing their narrative voices and visual languages.
As part of SAIC’s MFA in Studio curriculum, students will complete 60 credits hours taking courses of their choosing across studio, design, and academic departments; participate in graduate critiques that alternate between discipline-specific panels in the fall semester and interdisciplinary panels in the spring semester; and present their work to their peers and to the public through the Graduate Thesis Exhibition.
Students in the Comics program have access to world-class facilities and resources. These include a comics classroom equipped with drafting tables and digital scanner; screen printing stations; a bookbinding studio; display cases for exhibiting artwork; and much more. A wealth of other campus-wide resources such as gallery spaces, libraries, and other special collections makes SAIC an ideal place to pursue a comics education. The Comics program’s faculty is made up of professionals in their fields, including renowned comic artists, authors, and graphic designers.
Job Integration Rate
For the class of 2024, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago reports strong post-graduation employment outcomes including 80 percent of the Undergraduate Alumni (Class of 2024) employed, with an overall career outcomes rate of 93.9%. And, 85.6 percent of the graduate Alumni (Class of 2024) employed. These figures indicate that a significant majority of graduates secure employment or pursue further education shortly after completing their degrees. However, it’s important to note that SAIC specializes in art and design education. While many graduates find success in creative industries, some may face challenges in securing positions in their desired fields.
References
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