The
California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as
CalArts, is located in
Valencia, CaliforniaValencia is an affluent planned community located in Los Angeles County, California in the northwestern corner of the Santa Clarita Valley, adjacent to Interstate 5. In 1987, it was one of the four unincorporated communities that merged to create the city of Santa Clarita, California...
, in
Los Angeles County, CaliforniaLos Angeles County is a county in California and is by far the most populous county in the United States. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau give an estimated 2008 population of 9,862,049 residents, while the California State government's population bureau lists a January 1, 2009, estimate of...
. CalArts is authorized by the state of California to grant
Bachelor of Fine ArtsIn the United States, the Bachelor of Fine Arts, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. It is also named in some countries the Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...
and
Master of Fine ArtsIn the United States, a Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring two to three years of study. In the United Kingdom, a typically requires two years, whereas a is usually one year of study....
in the visual, performing, and literary arts. The Herb Alpert School of Music was accredited in 2009 to grant a
Doctor of Musical ArtsThe Doctor of Musical Arts degree is a doctoral academic degree in music. The D.M.A. combines advanced studies in an applied area of specialization with graduate-level academic study in subjects such as music history, music theory, or music pedagogy. The D.M.A...
.
A school created by
Walt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder Walter Elias...
in the early 1960s and staffed by an alternative array of professionals, CalArts provides a collaborative environment for all sorts of artists. Students are free to develop their own work (over which they retain control and copyright) in a workshop atmosphere, as respected members of a community of artists in which authority is constantly tested and where teaching works through persuasion rather than coercion. Intercultural exchange among artists helps in practicing and understanding of the art making process in the broadest context possible.
History
CalArts was initially formed through the merger of the
Chouinard Art InstituteThe Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .Born in Montevideo, Minnesota, Chouinard studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, and in Munich, Germany...
(founded 1921) and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (founded 1883). Both of the formerly existing institutions were going through financial difficulties around the same time, and the founder of the Art Institute, Nelbert Chouinard was also becoming fatally ill. It was through the impetus of
Walt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder Walter Elias...
, who found and trained many of his studio artists at Chouinard (including
Mary BlairMary Blair , born Mary Robinson, was an American artist best remembered today for work done for The Walt Disney Company. Blair produced striking concept art for such films as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South and Cinderella...
,
Maurice NobleMaurice Noble was an American animation background artist and layout designer whose contributions to the industry spanned more than 60 years. He was a long-time associate of animation director Chuck Jones, most notably at Warner Bros. in the 1950s...
, and some of the Nine Old Men, among others), that was responsible for coordinating the merger of the two institutions, along with his brother
RoyRoy Oliver Disney was, with his younger brother Walt Disney, co-founder of what is now The Walt Disney Company. After Walt died, Roy became the chairman of the company...
and Lulu Von Hagen.
The institute was started as Disney's dream of an interdisciplinary "Caltech of the arts," it was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the performing arts. The founding board of trustees originally planned on creating CalArts as a school as an entertainment complex, a destination like Disneyland, and a feeder school for the industry. In an ironic turn of fate, they appointed Dr. Robert W. Corrigan as the first president of the Institute. Corrigan, former dean of the School of Arts at New York University, was attempting to create a similar mix of artistic disciplines as those that were going to be attempted at Cal Arts. He was later joined the following year by his friend
Herbert BlauA director and theoretician of performance, Herbert Blau is professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of Washington...
, hired as the Institute's provost and dean of the School of Theater and Dance. Subsequently, Blau was instrumental in hiring a number of professionals like
Mel PowellMel Powell was a jazz pianist and composer of classical music....
(dean of the School of Music) ,
Paul BrachPaul Brach, Born March 13 1924 in New York City and he died November 16 2007 in Easthampton, New York. Paul Brach was primarily known as an American abstract painter and as a lecturer and educator....
(dean of the School of Art),
Alexander MackendrickAlexander Mackendrick was a British-American film director and teacher.-Biography:Alexander Mackendrick was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the only child of Francis Robert Mackendrick and Martha Mackendrick. They had emigrated to the United States from Glasgow in 1911. His father was a...
(dean of the School of Film/Video), sociologist Michael Stein (dean of Critical Studies), and
Victor PapanekVictor Papanek was a designer and educator who became a strong advocate of the socially and ecologically responsible design of products, tools, and community infrastructures. He disapproved of manufactured products that were unsafe, showy, maladapted, or essentially useless...
(dean of the School of Design; now incoporated in the Art school) as well other influential program heads and teachers such as
Allan KaprowAllan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...
,
Bella LewitzkyBella Lewitzky was a modern dance choreographer and noted teacher....
, Michael Asher,
Jules EngelJules Engel was a Jewish-Hungarian American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, and director of live action and animated films, and teacher...
,
John BaldessariJohn Baldessari, is a conceptual artist.His work often attempts to point out irony in contemporary art theory and practices or reduce it to absurdity. His art has been featured in more than 200 solo exhibitions in the U.S...
,
Judy ChicagoJudy Chicago is a feminist artist, author, and educator.Judy Chicago is a feminist artist who has been making work since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into art-making coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content...
, Miriam Shapiro, and
Douglas HueblerDouglas Huebler was an American conceptual artist. Douglas Huebler grew up on a farm during the Great Depression in rural Michigan. Despite his early desire to become an artist, his father worried over the money needed to attend university and thought he would never make money as an artist...
whom largely came from a counterculture and avant garde side of the art world.
The ground-breaking for CalArts' current campus took place on May 3, 1969. However, construction of the new campus was stifled by torrential rains and labor troubles of every variety. So, instead the “new” school began its first year in the buildings of Villa Cabrini Academy, a former Catholic girls’ school on the edge of downtown Burbank. CalArts moved to its present campus, in the Valencia section of the city of
Santa Clarita, CaliforniaSanta Clarita is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County, California, United States and the twenty-sixth largest city in the State of California. The California Department of Finance estimated the city population as of January 1, 2009 at 177,150. Including unincorporated areas of the Santa...
, in November 1971. The institute has remained funded through the ongoing contributions of
Walt DisneyWalter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder Walter Elias...
and his family, who provided funding for the ongoing operation of this school in his will. The campus is located on McBean Parkway, which has a direct connection to
Interstate 5Interstate 5 is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, paralleling the Pacific Ocean from Canada to Mexico and serving some of the largest cities of that part of the U.S., including Seattle, Tacoma, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco/Oakland, Los Angeles, and San Diego...
.
Recent developments
Beginning in the summer of 1987, CalArts became the place where the state-funded
California State Summer School for the ArtsThe California State Summer School for the Arts, commonly known as CSSSA [See-Suh] or InnerSpark, is a four-week arts program currently being held at California Institute of the Arts for high school students. The goal of CSSSA-InnerSpark is to provide an educational experience that goes beyond the...
was held. It began as a program to nurture talented high school students in the fields of
animationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways...
,
creative writingCreative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
,
danceDance is a sport and art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....
,
filmExperimental film or experimental cinema describes a range of filmmaking styles that are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking. "Avant-garde" is also used to describe this work, and "underground" has been used in the...
and
video
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data....
,
musicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, theatre arts, and
visual artsThe visual arts are art forms that focus on the creation of works which are primarily visual in nature, such as traditional plastic arts , modern visual arts , and design and crafts...
. CalArts expanded on the concept by creating the
Community Arts PartnershipThe Community Arts Partnership was established in 1990,and is the first program of its kind in the U.S. The program links the California Institute of the Arts to community art centers and public schools throughout Los Angeles County as part of an expanding joint endeavor to provide college-level...
in 1990. While CSSSA is open to qualifying California students, CAP, as it's commonly known, is a service provided to students living within the Los Angeles County school system. Many CalArts faculty and students mentor students in both programs.
Over the years, the school has also develop on-campus, interdisciplinary laboratories, such as the Center for Experiments in Art, Information, and Technology,
Center for Integrated MediaThe Center for Integrated Media is a new media arts initiative located within the California Institute of the Arts.The Center was started in the early 1990s and is one of the longest running new media arts initiatives in the U.S. The current director is Tom Leeser.-External links:*...
,
Center for New Performance at CalArtsThe Center for New Performance is, the professional producing arm of the California Institute of the Arts. It was established in 1999 as a forum for the creation of ground breaking theatrical performance. Originally named the Center for the New Theater, the name was expanded in 2005 to reflect the...
, and the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts.
In the year 1994,
Herb AlpertHerbert "Herb" Alpert is an American musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass or just TJB...
, a professional musician and admirer of the institute, collaborated with CalArts with his non-profit foundation to establish the
Alpert Awards in the ArtsThe CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts was established in the 1994 by The Herb Alpert Foundation in collaboration with the California Institute of the Arts . The foundation provides $50,000 annual fellowship to five artist in the field of film and video, visual arts, theatre, dance, and music....
. While the foundation provides the award for winning recipients , the school's faculty in the fields film/new media, visual arts, theatre, dance, and music select artists in their field to nominate an individual artist who is recognized for their innovation in their given medium. Recipients of this award are required to stay for a week as visiting artists at CalArts and mentor students studying their metier. In 2008, CalArts renamed the School of Music in his name, courtesy of a $15 million dollar donation.
In 2003, CalArts established a performance arts theatre in downtown Los Angeles called
REDCATOpened November 2003, REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater is the downtown Los Angeles exhibition venue of the California Institute of the Arts. Located in the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall complex, REDCAT is a black box theater, exhibition space, and comfortable lounge...
, the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Center for New Performance, the professional producing arm of the CalArts Theater School, brings works to the space from both student and professional artists and musicians.
In Fall 2009, the Institute will open a on-campus music pavilion, known as the
Wild Beast. The 3,200-square-foot, free-standing structure will serve as a space for classrooms and combined indoor-outdoor performance space. CalArts President Steven Lavine has stated “The core demand is that our Herb Alpert School of Music has doubled in size in the last decade; when we have guest artists, there is no place for them to perform-And the second reason was to allow enough space for the general public to attend [...]”
Academics
CalArts offers degree programs in
musicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound. Common elements of music are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
,
artArt is the process or product of deliberately arranging elements in a way that appeals to the senses or emotions. It encompasses a diverse range of human activities, creations, and modes of expression, including music, literature, film, sculpture, and paintings...
,
danceContemporary dance is a genre of concert dance that employs systems and methods found in modern dance and postmodern dance. Contemporary dance draws on modern dance techniques as well as newer philosophies of movement that depart from classical dance techniques by altogether omitting structured...
,
filmExperimental film or experimental cinema describes a range of filmmaking styles that are generally quite different from, and often opposed to, the practices of mainstream commercial and documentary filmmaking. "Avant-garde" is also used to describe this work, and "underground" has been used in the...
and
video
Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data....
,
animationAnimation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. It is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in a number of ways...
, theater,
puppetryPuppetry is a form of theatre or performance which involves the manipulation of puppets. It is very ancient, and is believed to have originated 30,000 years BC. Puppetry takes many forms but they all share the process of animating inanimate performing objects...
, and
writingCreative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
. Students receive intensive professional training in the area of his/her career purpose without being cast into a rigid pattern. Its focus is in
interdisciplinaryAn interdisciplinary field or multidisciplinary field is a field of study that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....
,
contemporary artContemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced since...
, and the Institute's stated mission is to develop professional artists of tomorrow- artists who will change their field. 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.
Admissions
Admissions to CalArts is based solely on the applicant's creative talent and future potential. Every school within the Institute does require that applicants send in a
Artist's statementAn artist's statement is a brief text composed by an artist and intended to explain, justify, and contextualize his or her body of work. Artists often have a short and/or a long version of the same statement, and they may maintain and revise these statements throughout their careers...
, along with a
portfolioCareer portfolios are used to plan, organize and document education, work samples and skills. People use career portfolios to apply to jobs, apply to college or training programs, get a higher salary, show transferable skills, and to track personal development. They are more in-depth than a...
or audition (depending on the program) in order to be considered for admission. The school does not review an applicants
SATThe SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a non-profit organization in the United States, and was once developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service...
scores without consent, and does not consider an applicant's GPA as part of the admission process.
Disney's Vision
The initial concept behind CalArts' interdisciplinary approach came from
Richard WagnerWilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director and essayist, primarily known for his operas...
's idea of
GesamtkunstwerkA gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so...
("total artwork"), which Disney himself was fond of and explored in a variety of forms, beginning with his own studio, then later in the incorporation of CalArts. He began with the classic Disney film
FantasiaFantasia is a American animated feature produced by Walt Disney and the third film in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series. Fantasia features animation set to classical music and no dialogue—only spoken introductions by the host, American composer and music critic Deems Taylor, before segments...
(1940), where animators, dancers, composers, and artists alike collaborated together. In 1962,
Walt Disney ImagineeringWalt Disney Imagineering was formed by entertainment mogul Walt Disney on December 16, 1952 as WED Enterprises to develop plans for a theme park and to manage Disney's personal assets. It was an independent, private company, owned by Walt Disney himself, but on February 3, 1965, was merged into...
was founded, where Disney integrated artists from his animation studio and elsewhere, as well as formally-trained engineers and achieved creative critical mass in the development of
DisneylandDisneyland is an American theme park in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of The Walt Disney Company. It was dedicated with a press preview on July 17, 1955, and opened to the general public July 18, 1955...
. He believed that the same concept that developed WDI, could also be applied to a university setting, where art students of different mediums would be exposed to and explore a wide-range of creative directions. Disney himself has stated of his memorial school:
Programs
Schools and degree programs available at CalArts include:
- School of Art: Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Photography and Media
- School of Critical Studies: MFA Writing, MA in Aesthetics and Politics, MFA Interschool Degree, Integrated Media (MFA)
- The Sharon Lund School of Dance: Various Dance Programs
- School of Film/Video: Film and Video, Experimental Animation, Character Animation (BFA), Film Directing (MFA)
- The Herb Alpert School of Music: DMA Composer-Performer, Composition, Composition for New Media/Experimental Sound Practices (ESP) (MFA), Performer/Composer, Performer/Composer: African American, Improvisational Music (MFA), Music Technology (BFA), Performance, Musical Arts (BFA), World Music (BFA and MFA)
- School of Theater: Acting, Directing (MFA), Writing for Performance (MFA), Puppetry (MFA), Design and Production: Costume Design, Lighting Design, Producing (MFA), Stage Management, Production Management (MFA), Scene Design, Sound Design, Video for Performance (MFA), Technical Direction, Scenic Painting, (MFA).
Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology
CEAIT, the Center for Experiments in Art, Information and Technology, exists as a coalition between interested faculty and students at CalArts to help with the creation and presentation of new work and research involving technology and the arts. Recent and past works are presented on the programs's website, and through a number of sponsored concerts and installations at CalArts,
REDCATOpened November 2003, REDCAT, the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater is the downtown Los Angeles exhibition venue of the California Institute of the Arts. Located in the Frank Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall complex, REDCAT is a black box theater, exhibition space, and comfortable lounge...
and other venues. It also sponsors, when possible, guest lectures and visiting artist residencies.
CEAIT has for its resources, the electronic music studios of the School of Music including B303 (electronics/hardware lab), B304 (digital sound and technology studio), B305 (multimedia classroom and computer/video studio), and B307/B308 (the Dizzie Gillespie Recording Studio).
Important contributors to the center include
David RosenboomDavid Rosenboom is an American composer and pioneer in the use of neurofeedback. Rosenboom has also worked with cross-cultural collaborations and compositional algorithms....
,
Morton SubotnickMorton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...
, and
Mark ConiglioMedia artist, composer, and programmer Mark Coniglio is recognized as a pioneer in the integration of live performance and interactive digital technology. With choreographer Dawn Stoppiello he is co-founder of Troika Ranch, a New York City based performance group that that integrate music, dance,...
.
Notable alumni, faculty, and visiting artists
Student Council
Student Council is a student organization with leadership by democratically elected representatives, including 5 officers (President, Vice President, Treasurer, Secretary, and Trustee) and 12 senators (including 2 reps from each school). Their primary purpose is to function as a liaison between the Board of Trustees, the administration, faculty, staff and students. The Student Council uses an annual budget, gathered from the student activity fee, of approximately $80,000 to fund receptions, independent student projects, the campus radio station and television channel (KCIA), student magazines, and some student parties such as Halloween and the Spring Fashion Show. The council also has representatives on various committees and councils at CalArts. The council holds informal weekly meetings during the school semester that are open to the entire campus.
Deans Council
Deans Council is the weekly meeting of the deans of each school or division within the Institute, together with the President and Provost, a representative from Academic Council and a representative from Student Council.
Academic Council
The Academic Council consists of faculty representatives from the schools and library who meet weekly to discuss academic and curricular matters throughout the Institute. The Student Council Vice-President attends Academic Council meetings and represents students' opinions.
See also
- A113
A113 is an inside joke present as an Easter egg in animated films created by alumni of CalArts, referring to the classroom number used by graphic design students at the school...
- The 1 Second Film
The 1 Second Film is a non-profit collaborative art project being created by thousands of people around the world, including many celebrities.The film is built around one second of experimental animation...
- Womanhouse
Womanhouse was a women-only art installation and performance organized by Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro, co-founders of the California Institute of the Arts Feminist Art Program. Chicago, Schapiro, their students and artists from the local community participated...
- Walt Disney Modular Theater
The Walt Disney Modular Theater is an indoor performance space located at the California Institute of the Arts in Valencia, California.Funded by Lillian Disney, who lent support to Walt's venture into education, her gift to the school to remodel a campus theater and rename it the Walt Disney...
- Pixar University
- Afterall
Afterall is a nonprofit contemporary art research and publishing organisation. It is based in London, at Central St Martins College of Art & Design, and in Los Angeles, at California Institute of the Arts....
Further reading and listening
External links