San Francisco Art Institute
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- For the Italian railway company, see Società per le strade ferrate dell'Alta Italia
The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI) is an accredited undergraduate and graduate school of contemporary art located in the Russian Hill district of San Francisco, California, United States.
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[edit] Academic programs
SFAI offers BA, MA, BFA, and MFA degrees and Post-Baccalaureate certificates. SFAI's current Dean of Academic Affairs is curator Okwui Enwezor.
[edit] 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.
[edit] School of Interdisciplinary Studies
The School of Interdisciplinary Studies has four research and teaching centers: Public Practice, Media Culture, Art+Science, and Word, Text, and Image.
[edit] History
The San Francisco Art Association (SFAA) was founded in 1871 and it opened the San Francisco School of Design (later the California School of Design) in 1874. It was directed by landscape painter Virgil Macey Williams. In 1893 SFAA and CSD moved to the former mansion of Mark Hopkins and was renamed 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 school was renamed the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA). The CSFA moved to its current location at 800 Chestnut Street. 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 Keatinge Clay added 22,500 sq. feet of studio space, a large theater/lecture hall, outdoor amphitheater, galleries, and cafe.
[edit] Photography
The photography department was founded by Ansel Adams.
[edit] 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.
[edit] Notable faculty
- Current faculty member George Kuchar, filmmaker
- Current faculty member Debra Bloomfield, photographer and ex-wife of photographer Richard Misrach
- Current faculty member Linda Connor, large-format photographer
- Current faculty member Tony Labat
- Current faculty member Henry Wessel, Jr., one of the New Topography photographers
- Faculty member Ansel Adams, landscape photographer, founded the photography department in 1945
- Faculty member Imogen Cunningham, portrait photographer
- Faculty member Angela Davis (joined 1976)
- Faculty member Dorothea Lange, influential documentary photographer, "Migrant Mother"
- Faculty member Frederick Meyer, founder of the California College of the Arts (1907)
- Faculty member Eadweard Muybridge, inventor of the Zoopraxiscope (1880)
- Faculty member Sidney Peterson, film director, initiated first film courses at SFAI (1947)
[edit] Notable Alumni
- Lance Acord, film director (2003)
- Michael Arcega, sculptor
- Devendra Banhart, singer
- Gutzon Borglum, creator of Mt. Rushmore (1927)
- Kathryn Bigelow, film director
- Enrique Chagoya, printmaker
- Michael Cotten (1971)
- Richard Diebenkorn, American Abstract/Figurative Artist (1946/7)
- Karen Finley, performance artist
- Don Ed Hardy, tattoo artist
- Joan Brown, painter
- Robert Graham (sculptor)
- Eduardo Kingman, master Latin American painter
- Ronald Davis, painter
- Michael Heizer, earth artist, sculptor
- Gary Stephan, painter
- Peter Reginato, sculptor
- Frosty Myers, sculptor
- Carlos Villa, painter
- Leo Valledor, painter
- Ronnie Landfield, painter
- John Duff, sculptor
- Mike Henderson, painter, biues musician
- Penelope Houston, musician, lead singer and songwriter of The Avengers
- David Ireland
- 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)
- Annie Leibovitz, official photographer for Rolling Stone magazine (1973)
- Mads Lynnerup
- Paul McCarthy (1968)
- Darrell McClure cartoonist
- Barry McGee (aka TWIST) painter/graffiti artist (1991)
- Errol Morris Documentary Filmmaker - attended in 1973 (see ID photo on [1])
- Win Ng, co-founder of Taylor & Ng (1971)
- Jason Rhoades, sculptor
- Catherine Opie, photographer
- William Wiley, Guggenheim Fellow (2001)
- Katherine Sherwood, Guggenheim Fellow (2005)
- Stephanie Syjuco, (1991)
- Jonathan Yegge, performance artist (expelled 2000)
