School of the Art Institute of Chicago
Founded as the Chicago Academy of Design in 1866, its purpose was to provide a challenging education in the studio arts and exhibition opportunities for its students. The School 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 designed and built for the World’s Columbian Exposition in 1893. Today the School is known as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC).
SAIC has the largest school-museum campus in the United States. Since 1976, SAIC has occupied its own cutting-edge facilities adjoining the Museum and the heralded Modern Wing overlooking Grant Park and Lake Michigan with additional buildings throughout an urban campus at the heart of the Chicago Loop.
Providing degrees at the undergraduate, post-baccalaureate, and graduate levels, SAIC 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; architecture, historic preservation and interior architecture; ceramics; fashion design; fiber; painting and drawing; performance; photography; printmaking; sculpture; sound; time arts (time-based media); film and video; visual communication; visual and critical studies; and writing. A comprehensive program in liberal arts emphasizes the critical role that humanities, mathematics, and sciences play in artists’ development.
Mission
To provide excellence in the delivery of a global education in visual, design, media, and related arts, with attendant studies in the history and theory of those disciplines set within a broad-based humanistic curriculum in the liberal arts and sciences. To provide instruction for this education in a range of formats: written, spoken, media, and exhibition-based. Excerpted from The Art Institute of Chicago’s Corporate Charter, originally obtained from the State of Illinois in 1879, and revised in 2004.
Courses Offered
Undergraduate Programs
- BA in visual and critical studies
- Bachelor of interior architecture
- Bachelor of Fine Arts
- BFA with emphasis in art education
- BFA with emphasis in art history, theory and criticism
- BFA with emphasis in writing
- Consecutive degree option for BFA and BA in visual and critical studies First year experience
Graduate Programs
- Master of Architecture
- Master of Architecture with Emphasis in
- Interior Architecture
- Master of Arts in Arts Administration and Policy
- Master of Arts in Art Education
- Master of Arts in Art Therapy
- Master of Arts in Modern Art History, Theory,
- and Criticism
- Master of Arts in New Arts Journalism
- Master of Arts in Teaching
- Master of Arts in Visual and Critical Studies
- Master of Design in Designed Objects
- Master of Design in Fashion, Body and Garment
- Master of Fine Arts in Studio
- Master of Fine Arts in Writing
- Master of Science in Historic Preservation
- Dual degrees MA Modern Art History, Theory & Criticism & MA Arts Admin & Policy
- Certificate in historic preservation
Contact Details
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago
37 South Wabash Avenue,
Chicago,Illinois, 60603
Admissions Office: 312 629-6100
Official Website: http://www.saic.edu/
