School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago is the private art school of the Art Institute of Chicago in Chicago, Illinois.
Tracing its history to an art students' cooperative founded in 1866, which grew into the museum and school, 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 been a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design since the association's founding in 1991 and is also accredited by the National Architectural Accrediting Board.
Its downtown Chicago campus consists of seven buildings located in the immediate vicinity of the AIC building. SAIC is in an equal partnership with the AIC and shares many administrative resources such as construction, and human resources. The campus, located in the Loop, comprises chiefly five main buildings: the McLean Center, the Michigan building, the Sharp, Sullivan Center, and the Columbus. SAIC used to hold classes in the Spertus building at 610 S Michigan Ave. SAIC owns and rents additional buildings throughout Chicago that are used as student galleries or investments. There are three dormitory facilities: The Buckingham, Jones Hall, and 162 N State Street residencies.
History
The institute has its roots in the 1866 founding of the Chicago Academy of Design, which local artists established in rented rooms on Clark Street. It was financed by member dues and patron donations. Four years later, the school moved into its own Adams Street building, which was destroyed the following year 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. 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.
Academics
SAIC offers classes in art and technology; arts administration; art history, theory, and criticism; art education and art therapy; ceramics; fashion design; filmmaking; historic preservation; architecture; interior architecture; designed objects; journalism; painting and drawing; performance; photography; printmaking; sculpture; sound; new media; video; visual communication; visual and critical studies; animation; illustration; fiber; and writing.SAIC also offers an interdisciplinary Low-Residency MFA for students wishing to study the fine arts and/or writing.
In 2025, the school reported a six-year graduation rate of 67%.
Chicago Architects Oral History Project
In 1983, the Department of Architecture began the Chicago Architects Oral History Project. More than 78 architects have contributed.Video Data Bank
The Video Data Bank was started at SAIC In 1976, "committed to fostering awareness and scholarship of the history and contemporary practice of video and media art." The Video Data Bank collection includes over 6,000 works of video art by over 600 artists.Demographics
As of fall 2025, the school enrolled 3,323 students, 2,737 of which were undergraduate and 586 graduate students. 76% of them were female and 25% were from outside of the United States. 7.8% of students were from Chicago.Activities
Visiting Artists Program
Founded in 1868, the Visiting Artists Program is one of the oldest public programs of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Formalized in 1951 by Flora Mayer Witkowsky's endowment of a supporting fund, the Visiting Artists Program hosts public presentations by artists, designers, and scholars each year in lectures, symposia, performances, and screenings. It showcases work in all media, including sound, video, performance, poetry, painting, and independent film; in addition to significant curators, critics, and art historians.Recent visiting artists have included composer and artist Raven Chacon, artist working with artificial intelligence Stephanie Dinkins, and sculptor and choreographer Guadalupe Maravilla. Visiting artists for the 2022–23 school year included Torkwase Dyson and Wu Tsang, 2021-22 included Shirin Neshat, Hito Steyerl and Katie Paterson, and 2020-21 included Meg Onli and Fred Wilson.
Other visiting artists have included Catherine Opie, Andi Zeisler, Aaron Koblin, Jean Shin, Sam Lipsyte, Ben Marcus, Marilyn Minter, Pearl Fryar, Tehching Hsieh, Homi K. Bhabha, Bill Fontana, Wolfgang Laib, Suzanne Lee, and Amar Kanwar among others.
Additionally, the Distinguished Alumni Series brings alumni back to the community to present their work and reflect on how their experiences at SAIC have shaped them. Alumni speakers have included Tania Bruguera, Jenni Sorkin, Kori Newkirk, Saya Woolfalk, Jun Nguyen-Hatsushiba, Trevor Paglen, and Sanford Biggers.
Galleries
- SAIC Galleries – Located at 33 E. Washington Street, SAIC Galleries occupies four floors and offers 26,000 square feet of exhibition space for annual student and faculty shows, as well as special exhibitions featuring national and international artists.
- Sullivan Galleries – Located to the 7th floor of the Sullivan Center at 33 S. State Street. With shows and projects often led by faculty or student curators, it is a teaching gallery. In the spring of 2020, SAIC announced it would relocate its galleries and Department of Exhibitions & Exhibition Studies from 33 S. State Street to 33 E. Washington Street after ten years of operation.
- SITE Galleries – Founded in 1994, SITE, once known as the Student Union Galleries, is a student-run organization at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago for the exhibition of student work. They have two locations: The SITE Sharp of the 37 South Wabash Avenue building; and SITE Columbus of the 280 South Columbus Drive building. The two locations allow the galleries to cycle two shows simultaneously.
Student organizations
ExTV
ExTV is a student-run time-arts platform that broadcasts online and on campus. Its broadcasts are available via monitors located throughout the 112 S. Michigan building, the 37 S Wabash building, and the 280 S. Columbus building.''F Newsmagazine''
F Newsmagazine is SAIC's student-run newspaper. The magazine is a monthly publication with a run of 12,000 copies. Copies are distributed throughout the city, mainly at locations frequented by students such as popular diners and movie theaters.Free Radio SAIC
Free Radio SAIC is the student-run Internet radio station of The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Free Radio uses an open programming format and encourage its DJs to explore and experiment with the medium of live radio. Program content and style vary but generally include music from all genres, sound art, narratives, live performances, current events and interviews.Featured bands and guests on Free Radio SAIC include Nü Sensae, The Black Belles, Thomas Comerford, Kevin Michael Richardson, Jeff Bennett, Carolyn Lawrence, and much more.
Student government
The student government of SAIC, as required by its constitution, has four officers holding equal power and responsibility. Elections are held every year. There are no campaign requirements. Any group of four students may run for office, but there must always be four students.The student government is responsible for hosting a school-wide student meeting once a month. At these meetings students discuss school concerns of any nature. The predominant topic is funding for the various student organizations. Organizations which desire funding must present a proposal at the meeting by which the students vote whether they should receive monies or not. The student government cannot participate in the vote: only oversee it.
Rankings
As of 2025, U.S. News & World Report ranks SAIC as the second best overall graduate program for fine arts in the U.S. tied with the Yale School of Art and behind the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. In their previous rankings done in 2016, U.S. News & World Report college rankings ranked SAIC the fourth best overall graduate program for fine arts in the U.S. tying with the Rhode Island School of Design, and behind Yale, UCLA, and Virginia Commonwealth University School of the Arts.In 2021, the university was ranked the seventh globally according to the QS World University Rankings by the subject Art and Design.
In January 2013, the Global Language Monitor ranked SAIC as the #5 college in the U.S., the highest ever for an art or design school in a general college ranking.
In a 2002 survey conducted by the National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University, SAIC was named the "most influential art school" by art critics at general interest news publications from across the United States.
Notable people
Notable professors at SAIC include Nick Cave, James Elkins, Lisa Wainwright, Stephanie Brooks, Mary Jane Jacob, Frank Piatek, Edra Soto, Michelle Grabner, Jefferson Pinder, Adrian Wong, and Candida Alvarez.Notable alumni include Ivan Albright, Thomas Hart Benton, Sanford Biggers, Sonya Clark, Amanda Crowe, Megan Elizabeth Euker, Richard Hunt, Rashid Johnson, Jeff Koons, Joan Mitchell, Georgia O'Keefe, Trevor Paglen, Sterling Ruby, Dread Scott, Belle Silveira, Charles W. White, and Grant Wood.
Controversy
''Mirth & Girth''
On May 11, 1988, a student painting depicting Harold Washington, the first black mayor of Chicago, was taken down by three of the city's African-American aldermen based on its content. The painting by David Nelson, Mirth & Girth, was of Washington clad only in women's underwear.Police Superintendent LeRoy Martin ordered the removal of the painting, which was returned the following day. The American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department and the aldermen on the grounds that they had violated Nelson's First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendment rights. In 1992, a federal court affirmed his constitutional rights had been violated. In 1994, the city agreed to a settlement: the money would go toward attorneys' fees for the ACLU. The three aldermen agreed not to appeal the 1992 ruling, and the police department established procedures over seizure of materials protected by the First Amendment.