California Institute of the Arts
The California Institute of the Arts is a private art school in Santa Clarita, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the US created specifically for students of both the visual and performing arts. It offers Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. It is located about 30 miles northwest of downtown Los Angeles.
The school was first envisioned by many benefactors in the early 1960s including Nelbert Chouinard, Walt Disney, Lulu Von Hagen, and Thornton Ladd.
History
CalArts was originally formed in 1961, as a merger of the Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. Both of the formerly existing institutions were going through financial difficulties, and the founder of the Art Institute, Nelbert Chouinard, was terminally ill. Walt Disney was longtime friends with both Chouinard and Lulu May Von Hagen, the chair of the Conservatory, and discovered and trained many of his studio's artists at the two schools. To keep the educational mission of the schools alive, the merger and expansion of the two institutions was coordinated; a process which continued after Walt's death in 1966. Joining him in this effort were his brother Roy O. Disney, Nelbert Chouinard, Lulu May Von Hagen and Thornton Ladd.Without Walt, the remaining founders assembled a team and planned on creating CalArts as a school that was a destination, like Disneyland, to be a feeder school for the various arts industries. To lead this project they appointed Robert W. Corrigan as the first president of the institute.
The original board of trustees at CalArts included Nelbert Chouinard, Lulu May Von Hagen, Harrison Price, Royal Clark, Robert W. Corrigan, Roy E. Disney, Roy O. Disney, film producer Z. Wayne Griffin, H. R. Haldeman, Ralph Hetzel, Chuck Jones, Ronald Miller, Millard Sheets, attorney Maynard Toll, attorney Luther Reese Marr, bank executive G. Robert Truex Jr., Jerry Wexler, Meredith Willson, Peter McBean and Scott Newhall, Mrs. Roswell Gilpatric, and Mrs. J. L. Hurschler.
In 1965, the Alumni Association was founded as a separate organization. The 12 founding board of directors members were Mary Costa, Edith Head, Gale Storm, Marc Davis, Tony Duquette, Harold Grieve, John Hench, Chuck Jones, Henry Mancini, Marty Paich, Nelson Riddle, and Millard Sheets.
The ground-breaking for CalArts' current campus took place on May 3, 1969, as part of the Master Plan for a new planned community in the Santa Clarita Valley of Los Angeles. However, construction of the new campus was hampered by torrential rains, labor shortages, and the Sylmar Earthquake in 1971. As a result, the first combined campus for the Institute started at the former Villa Cabrini Academy in July 1970. CalArts moved to its new campus in Valencia, now part of the city of Santa Clarita, California, in November 1971.
Founding CalArts president Corrigan, formerly the founding dean of the School of Arts at New York University, fired almost all the artists who taught at Chouinard and the Conservatory in his attempt to remake CalArts into his new vision. He appointed fellow academic Herbert Blau to be the founding dean of the School of Theatre and Dance, and serve as the institute's first Provost. Blau and Corrigan then hired other academics to found the original academic areas, including Mel Powell, Paul Brach, Alexander Mackendrick, Maurice R. Stein, and Richard Farson, as well as other influential faculty such as Stephan von Huene, Allan Kaprow, Bella Lewitzky, Michael Asher, Jules Engel, John Baldessari, Judy Chicago, Ravi Shankar, Max Kozloff, Miriam Shapiro, Douglas Huebler, Morton Subotnick, Norman M. Klein, and Nam June Paik, most of whom came from a counterculture and avant garde perspective.
Corrigan held his position until 1972, when he was fired and replaced by then board member William S. Lund, Walt Disney's son-in-law, as the Institute approached insolvency. The period between 1972 and 1975 was extremely unstable financially, and Lund had to make significant operational reductions, including layoffs, reducing all faculty contracts to one-year, the pausing of degree programs, and the elimination of the structure of a School of Design, folding degree programs into other Schools, in order to keep the Institute alive.
In 1975, Robert J. Fitzpatrick was appointed president of CalArts. During his presidency, the Institute grew its enrollment and stabilized, renewed its accreditation, and added new programs for which it is known globally today including the programs of Character Animation and Jazz. While President, Fitzpatrick also served as the director of the 1984 Olympic Arts Festival. He then founded the Los Angeles Festival, which grew directly out of the proceeds of the 1984 Olympic Games. After 1984, John Orders largely coordinated the institute's operations in partnership with the other leaders. In 1987, Fitzpatrick resigned as president to take the position of head of EuroDisney in Paris, France.
During the search for a President from 1987–1988, Nicholas England, the then dean of the School of Music, served as Acting President. In the fall of 1988, Steven D. Lavine, then the Assistant Program Director for the Arts and Humanities of the Rockefeller Foundation, was appointed president. By the time Lavine started his tenure CalArts had developed a structural deficit of 16%, and during his time in office, Lavine grew enrollment and increased tuition significantly while remaining within the existing square footage of the campus, and in 2003 added the Roy & Edna Disney CalArts Theatre, part of the Los Angeles Music Center's new Walt Disney Concert Hall project, to the operations of the Institute.
Seven years into his tenure, President Lavine navigated the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, which closed the main building in Valencia at the start of the spring semester. Classes were held in rental party tents on the 60 acre grounds, and alternate teaching locations were scattered miles apart around Los Angeles County. The building was "red tagged" and not allowed to be used until millions of dollars of repairs were performed. Under the advisement of James Haire of American Conservatory Theater, Lavine was able to allocate emergency funding from Federal Emergency Management Agency. This funding provided the bulk of the financial assistance for structural repairs due to seismic activity. Additionally, private donations supported with aesthetic renovations of curated spaces in the building. CalArts reopened its doors to its Valencia campus in the fall 1994 semester.
On June 24, 2015, Lavine announced he would step down as president in May 2017, after 29 years in the position. After an 18-month search, Board Chair Tim Disney and the CalArts board of trustees announced on December 13, 2016, that Ravi S. Rajan, then the dean of the School of the Arts at the State University of New York at Purchase, was unanimously selected as president, to begin in June 2017.
Over the years, the institute has developed experimental interdisciplinary laboratories through extramural funding such as the ; the Center for Integrated Media; and the Cotsen Center for Puppetry.
Academics
CalArts offers various undergraduate and graduate degrees in programs that are related to and combine music, art, dance, film, animation, theater, and writing. Students receive intensive professional training in an area of their creative aspirations without being cast into a rigid pattern. The institute's overall focus is on experimental, multidisciplinary, contemporary arts practices, and its stated mission is to enable the professional artists of tomorrow, artists who will transform the world through artistic practice. With these goals in place, the Institute encourages students to recognize the complexity of political, social, and aesthetic questions and to respond to them with informed, independent judgment.Admission
Every program within the Institute requires that applicants send in an artist's statement, along with a portfolio or audition to be considered for admission. The institute has never required an applicant's SAT or other test scores, and does not consider an applicant's GPA as part of the admission process without the consent of the applicant.| 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | |
| Applicants | 4,033 | 4,431 | 2,265 |
| Admits | 1,238 | 1,200 | 545 |
| Admission rate | 30.7% | 27.1% | 24.1% |
| Enrolled | 529 | 523 | 235 |