San Francisco Institute of the Arts

The history of the institute began in 1871 with the formation of the San Francisco Arts Association (SFAA), a small but influential group of artists, writers and public figures led by Virgil Macy Williams and the first president, Juan B. Vandesford, with the participation of B.P. Avery, Edward Boschi , Thomas Hill, and S.W. Shaw. The purpose of the association was to promote local authors, as well as the creation of a school and a museum for the further development and preservation of a new artistic tradition that has developed in relative cultural isolation in the American West.

By 1874, the SFAA had 700 permanent members and 100 lifetime members. Enough funds were raised to open an art school called the California School of Design (CSD). Artist Virgil Macy Williams, who had studied with painting masters in Italy for almost ten years and taught at Harvard College before arriving in San Francisco ^[2] , became the first principal and teacher of painting. He held both posts until his sudden death in 1886 ^[3] . During Williams' direction, CSD has earned a good reputation at the national level and has accumulated a significant collection of early California and Western fine art as the foundation for the future museum.

In 1893, Edward Searles donated to the University of California with the condition of transferring the SFAA to the Hopkins Mansion, one of the most luxurious and exquisitely decorated Victorian mansions, as an example and study guide for teaching fine art, music and literature ^[4] . Called the Mark Hopkins Institute of the Arts, it became the first San Francisco Center for the Visual Arts and Culture to house both the CSD campus and the SFAA art collection. Through this acquisition, University of California students were able to attend CSD classes.

In 1906, a devastating fire caused by an earthquake destroyed the building of the Mark Hopkins Institute of Art, and also damaged the recordings and art collections of the CSD and SFAA. The cost of restoring the building and its contents was estimated at $ 2,573,000, and the aggregate amount of numerous insurance payments was less than $ 100,000. However, over the course of the year, the SFAA built a new, but relatively more modest campus in the same place and named it the San Francisco Institute of Art ^[5] .

In 1916, the SFAA merged with the San Francisco Society of Artists and took over the San Francisco Museum of Art at the Palace of Fine Arts , which was created for the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exhibition . In addition, the school was renamed the California School of Fine Arts (CSFA) to reflect a regional role in the promotion, development, and preservation of art and culture. In 1926, the school moved to Chestnut Street in the Russian Hill area , and in 2015 it is the location of the main campus. In 1930, the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera created the picture The Making of a Fresco Showing the Building of a City for a student gallery.

The influential representatives of the first 60 years of the school are photographer Edward Maybridge , artist Maynard Dixon, author of the first American graphic novel, Henry Kiyama, one of the first African American artists, Sargent Claude Johnson, photographer Louise Dahl-Wulf , sculptor Gutson Borglum , German expressionist artist Rudolf Hess.

After the end of World War II, the school became the center of abstract expressionism , representatives of which were Clifford Still , Ed Reinhardt , Mark Rothko , David Park, Elmer Bischoff and Clay Spon. Although painting and sculpture remained the dominant trends for many years, the school also offered photography courses. In 1946, Ansel Adams and Minor White founded the Faculty of Art Photography, taught by Imogen Cunningham , Edward Weston and Dorothea Lange . In 1947, director Sidney Peterson began teaching a film art course. Continuing this line, in 1949, CSFA Director Douglas Makagi organized the international conference Western Round Table on Contemporary Art, which was attended by Marcel Duchamp , Frank Lloyd Wright and Gregory Bateson . The purpose of the round table was to identify “hidden assumptions” and formulate new questions about art.

By the early 1950s, San Francisco's North Beach had become the center of the West Coast's hipster movement , and music, poetry and discourse became an integral part of artists' lives. Jess Collins gave up his career as a plutonium researcher and joined the SFAI as a painting student. In 1953, he and his partner, the poet Robert Duncan , together with the artist Harry Jacobus opened the King Ubu Gallery - a significant alternative space for art, poetry and music. Soon, the California style of contemporary art developed, which combined abstraction, visualization, narration and jazz. SFAI instructors David Park, Elmer Bischoff, James Wicks, James Kelly ^[6] , Frank Lobdell ^[7] and Richard Dibenkorn became leaders in the visual arts of the Gulf region based on works by Edward Munch , Max Beckman , Edgar Degas and Henry exhibited in local museums Toulouse-Lautrec . Students at the school, including David Simpson, William T. Wiley, Robert Hudson , William Allan, Joan Brown, Manuel Nery, Carlos William and Wally Hedrick, continued to explore new ideas and new materials, starting funk art.

In 1961, the school received its current name - the San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI). Denying the distinction between visual and applied arts, the SFAI adhered to cutting-edge recognition of a wide range of expressive means that combined many practices, including performance, concept art, new media, graphics, typography, and political and social documentaries. Among the students in the early and mid-1960s were artists Ronald Davis, Robert Graham, Forrest Myers , Leo Walledor, Michael Heiser , Ronnie Landfield, Peter Reginato, Gary Stefan and John Duff, and in the late 1960s Annie Leibovitz , who soon started taking pictures for Rolling Stone magazine ; Paul McCarthy , famous for his performances and sculptural works; and Charles Bigelow, who became one of the first typographers to develop fonts for computers. Alumni Ruth-Marion Baruch and Pirkle Jones documented the early days of the Black Panther party in Northern California.

In 1969, Puffard Keating-Clay erected an extension to the Institute building, which added more than 2,000 m² of space. New studios, a large theater and lecture hall, an open amphitheater, galleries and cafes appeared ^[8] .

Installation art, video, music and social activism continued to inspire most of the work of teachers and students in the 1970s and 1980s. George Kuchar, Gunvor Nelson, Howard Fried, Paul Kos, Angela Davis , Katie Acker , Robert Colescott and many other influential artists and writers visited here. Among the students were several performers and musicians, including Karen Finley, whose performances defied representations of femininity and political power, as well as Prairie Prince and Michael Cotten, who presented their first performance as The Tubes in the SFAI lecture hall and became pioneers in areas of music video . The school became the center of the punk music scene, and groups such as Mutants , Avengers and Romeo Void were created by SFAI students. The technique also became part of artistic practice: the Sharon Grace project, Send / Receive, used satellite communications for interactive transcontinental performance, while the Survival Research Laboratories project, founded by student Mark Pauline, organized large-scale street ritualized interactions between cars, robots and pyrotechnics.

Since the 1990s, the studio and class have become increasingly connected with the world through social art and social activities. As SFAI students, Barry McGee, Aaron Noble, and Rigaud 23 became part of the movement known as Mission School, transferring their graffiti-inspired art to the streets and walls of the city. Teachers and students created special projects for different places: from the San Francisco promenade — the monument to Abraham Lincoln’s brigade by Anne Chamberlain and Walter Hood, to the US Consulate in Tijuana ( Mexico ) - sculpture by artist Pedro Reyes and SFAI students. Organizations such as Artists' Television Access (ATA) and Root Division, founded by alumni, and the SFAI City Studio program, engage local communities in art and create a cultural ecosystem ^[9] . The historical significance of the school was recognized in 2016, when its campus was included in the National Register of Historic Places ^[10] .

• Official Website of the San Francisco Institute of the Arts