The California Institute of the Arts

Hi friends, I hope you're fine? I saw a report yesterday on The California Institute of the Arts and apparently there are a lot of Stars who studied there like the producers of Cars or Nemo but also actors like David Hasselhoff, Dustin Hoffman, Tim Burton , ...

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Known by its nickname CalArts, is a private university located in Valencia, California. 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 performing arts. It offers Bachelor of Fine Arts, Master of Fine Arts, Master of Arts, and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees among six schools: Art; Critical Studies; Dance; Film/Video; Music; and Theater.

The school was first envisioned by many benefactors in the early 1960s, staffed by a diverse array of professionals (including Nelbert Murphy Chouinard, a founder of Chouinard Art Institute, Walt Disney, Lulu Von Hagen, Thornton Ladd and others). CalArts provides a collaborative environment for a diversity of artists. Students are free to develop their own work in a workshop atmosphere.

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 around the same time, and the founder of the Art Institute, Nelbert Chouinard, was also fatally ill.

The professional relationship between Madame Chouinard and Walt Disney began in 1929 when Disney had no money and Madame Chouinard agreed to train Disney's first animators on a pay-later basis. It was through the vision of Disney, who discovered and trained many of his studio artists at Chouinard, that the merger of the two institutions was coordinated; the process continued after his death in 1966.

Joining him were his brother Roy O. Disney, Lulu Von Hagen and Thornton Ladd, of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. In 1965, the Alumni Association was founded as a nonprofit organization and was governed by a 12-member board of directors to serve the best interests of the institute and its programs.

Members included leading professional artists and musicians, who contributed their knowledge, experience and skill to strengthen the institute.

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The ground-breaking for CalArts' current campus took place May 3, 1969. However, construction of the new campus was hampered by torrential rains, labor troubles and the earthquake in 1971. CalArts moved to its present campus in the Valencia section of the city of Santa Clarita, California in November 1971.

From the beginning, CalArts was plagued by the tensions between its art and trade school functions as well as between the non-commercial aspirations of the students and faculty and the conservative interests of the Disney family and trustees. The founding board of trustees originally planned on creating CalArts as a school in an entertainment complex, a destination like Disneyland, and a feeder school for the industry. Such a model is exemplified in the 1941 Disney film The Reluctant Dragon. 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 fired almost all the artists and teachers from Chouinard in his attempt to remake CalArts into his personal vision. Herbert Blau was 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.

The fundamental principles established at the Institute by Blau and the late Corrigan included ideas like “no technique in advance of need,” and that a curriculum should be cyclical rather than sequential, returning to root principles at regular intervals, and that “we’re a community of artists here, some of us called faculty and some called students."

Corrigan held his position until 1972, when he was replaced by William S. Lund, a Disney son-in-law. Within a month of Lund's tenure as president, 55 of CalArts' 325 faculty and staff were fired. Structured schedules were introduced. Classes were trimmed back and, within a year, the Institute was operating on budget. Some credit Lund with saving CalArts.

Others see his tenure as the end of an idealistic experiment. In 1975, Robert J. Fitzpatrick was appointed new president of CalArts. Holding this position for 12 years, in 1987 Fitzpatrick resigned as president to head Euro Disney in Paris. Nicholas England, former dean of the School of Music, was appointed acting president. One year later, Steven Lavine, associate director for arts and humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation, was named new president.

On June 24, 2015 Steven D. Lavine announced he would step down as President of the California Institute of the Arts in May 2017, after an unprecedented 29-year tenure. Concluding a search with over 500 candidates, the CalArts Board of Directors announced on December 13, 2016 that Ravi S. Rajan, Dean of the School of the Arts at the State University of New York at Purchase was unanimously elected as President, to begin in June 2017.

Beginning in the summer of 1987, CalArts became the host of the state-funded California State Summer School for the Arts program. It began as a program to nurture talented high school students in the fields of animation, creative writing, dance, film and video, music, theatre arts, and visual arts. CalArts expanded on the concept by creating the Community Arts Partnership in 1990. While CSSSA is open to qualifying California students, CAP, as it is commonly known, is a service provided to students living within underprivileged communities in the Los Angeles County school system. Many CalArts faculty and students mentor the high school students in both programs.

In 1994, Herb Alpert, a professional musician and admirer of the Institute, established the Alpert Awards in the Arts in collaboration with CalArts and his nonprofit the Herb Alpert Foundation. 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.
Over the years, the school has also developed on-campus, interdisciplinary laboratories, such as the Center for Experiments in Art, Information, and Technology, Center for Integrated Media, Center for New Performance at CalArts, and the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts.

Programs

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CalArts offers degree programs in music, art, dance, film and video, animation, theater, puppetry, and writing. Students receive intensive professional training in the area of their career purpose without being cast into a rigid pattern. Its focus is in interdisciplinary, contemporary art, 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.

Every school within the Institute requires that applicants send in an artist's statement, along with a portfolio or audition in order to be considered for admission.

The initial concept behind CalArts' interdisciplinary approach came from Richard Wagner's idea of Gesamtkunstwerk, 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 Fantasia (1940), where animators, dancers, composers, and artists alike collaborated. In 1952, Walt Disney Imagineering 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 Disneyland. 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.

Schools and degree programs available at CalArts include:

https://calarts.edu/

• School of Art: Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Photography and Media, Art and Technology
• School of Critical Studies: MFA Writing, MA in Aesthetics and Politics
• School of Film/Video: Film and Video, Experimental Animation, Character Animation, Film Directing
• The Herb Alpert School of Music: DMA Composer-Performer, Composition, Composition for New Media/Experimental Sound Practices, Performer/Composer, Performer/Composer: African American, Improvisational Music, Music Technology, Performance, Musical Arts, World Music
• School of Theater: Acting, Directing, Writing for Performance, Puppetry, Design and Production: Costume Design, Lighting Design, Producing, Stage Management, Production Management, Scene Design, Sound Design, Video for Performance, Technical Direction, Scenic Painting.
• The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance: Dance, Choreography

This is a school that will make all the nascent artists dream.

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