Kansas City Art Institute

Last updated

Kansas City Art Institute
Kansas City Art Institute lawn view.JPG
The campus green at Kansas City Art Institute
Type Private art school
Established1885;139 years ago (1885)
Academic affiliation
Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design
Academic staff
75
Students678 (Fall 2017) [1]
Location, ,
U.S.
Website kcai.edu

The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission. The institute has approximately 75 faculty members and 700 students, and offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.

Contents

History

Mineral Hall at the Kansas City Art Institute Mineral-hall.jpg
Mineral Hall at the Kansas City Art Institute

The school was founded in 1885 when art enthusiasts formed the "Sketch Club" with the purpose of "talking over art matters in general and to judge pictures." Meetings were originally in private homes and then moved to the Deardorf Building at 11th and Main in downtown Kansas City. The club had its first exhibition in 1887 and 12 benefactors stepped forward to form the Kansas City Art Association and School of Design.

In 1927, Howard Vanderslice purchased the August R. Meyer residence, a Germanic castle entitled Marburg and its 8-acre (3.24 ha) estate at 44th and Warwick Boulevard adjacent to the planned Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. A Wight and Wight addition was added to the building. The residence was later renamed "Vanderslice Hall" and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places along with another building on the campus—Mineral Hall. The campus has since expanded to 15 acres (6.07 ha).

In 1935, painter Thomas Hart Benton left New York City to teach at the school. Among the artists Benton influenced as a teacher at KCAI were Frederic James, Margot Peet, Jackson Lee Nesbitt, Roger Medearis, Glenn Gant, and Delmer J. Yoakum. [2] Though Benton brought attention to the Art Institute, he was dismissed in 1941 after making disparaging references to, as he claimed, the excessive influence of homosexuals in the art world. [3]

In 1992, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened on the west side of the campus. On the occasion of its 130th anniversary in 2015, the Kansas City Art Institute received an anonymous donation of $25 million, one of the largest gifts ever to an American art school. The money will be used to bolster the school's general endowment, improve and renovate its campus adjacent to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and, in the form of a challenge grant of $6 million, sharply increase the number of scholarships the school is able to give out. [4]

Presidents

Notable faculty

Notable lecturers

Notable alumni

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Hart Benton (painter)</span> American painter (1889–1975)

Thomas Hart Benton was an American painter, muralist, and printmaker. Along with Grant Wood and John Steuart Curry, he was at the forefront of the Regionalist art movement. The fluid, sculpted figures in his paintings showed everyday people in scenes of life in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts</span> Art school of Tufts University

The School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University is the art school of Tufts University, a private research university in Boston, Massachusetts. It offers undergraduate and graduate degrees dedicated to the visual arts.

The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard (1879–1969) in the Westlake neighborhood of Los Angeles, California. In 1961, Walt and Roy Disney guided the merger of the Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music to establish the California Institute of the Arts. Chouinard continued to operate until the new campus opened in 1970.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Leeds Arts University</span> Specialist arts university in Leeds, England

Leeds Arts University is a specialist arts further and higher education institution, based in the city of Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, with a main campus opposite the University of Leeds.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corcoran School of the Arts and Design</span> Art school of George Washington University

The Corcoran School of the Arts and Design is the professional art school of the George Washington University, in Washington, D.C. Founded in 1878, the school is housed in the Corcoran Gallery of Art, the oldest private cultural institution in Washington, located on The Ellipse, facing the White House. The Corcoran School is part of GW's Columbian College of Arts and Sciences and was formerly an independent college, until 2014.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tyrus Wong</span> Chinese-born American artist

Tyrus Wong was a Chinese-born American artist. He was a painter, animator, calligrapher, muralist, ceramicist, lithographer and kite maker, as well as a set designer and storyboard artist. One of the most-influential and celebrated Asian-American artists of the 20th century, Wong was also a film production illustrator, who worked for Disney and Warner Bros. He was a muralist for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), as well as a greeting card artist for Hallmark Cards. Most notably, he was the lead production illustrator on Disney's 1942 film Bambi, taking inspiration from Song dynasty art. He also served in the art department of many films, either as a set designer or storyboard artist, such as Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Around the World in 80 Days (1956), Rio Bravo (1959), The Music Man (1962), PT 109 (1963), The Great Race (1965), Harper (1966), The Green Berets (1968), and The Wild Bunch (1969), among others.

Events from the year 1901 in art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Regionalism (art)</span> American realist art movement

American Regionalism is an American realist modern art movement that included paintings, murals, lithographs, and illustrations depicting realistic scenes of rural and small-town America primarily in the Midwest. It arose in the 1930s as a response to the Great Depression, and ended in the 1940s due to the end of World War II and a lack of development within the movement. It reached its height of popularity from 1930 to 1935, as it was widely appreciated for its reassuring images of the American heartland during the Great Depression. Despite major stylistic differences between specific artists, Regionalist art in general was in a relatively conservative and traditionalist style that appealed to popular American sensibilities, while strictly opposing the perceived domination of French art.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jules Engel</span> American filmmaker and animator (1909–2003)

Jules Engel was an American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, animator, film director, and teacher of Hungarian origin. He was the founding director of the experimental animation program at the California Institute of the Arts, where he taught until his death, serving as mentor to several generations of animators.

Roger Medearis was an American Regionalist painter.

Jackson Lee Nesbitt was an American printmaker, teacher, painter, and ad executive. He took pride in calling Thomas Hart Benton a teacher, a mentor and his friend. Jack stayed true to his regionalist roots despite the dominance of Abstract Expressionism and he enjoyed the resurrection of his career at age 75.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Margot Peet</span> American painter

Marguerite Munger Peet (1903–1995) was an American painter. She did not have a far-reaching artistic reputation during her lifetime as she did not often exhibit her work in public. Her family found over 430 of her paintings after her death, and she has been the subject of three major retrospectives in the last 15 years. Her most significant work was created under the tutelage of famed American Regionalist painter Thomas Hart Benton.

Frederic James (1915–1985) was an American painter who specialized in watercolors. He was associated with the Regionalist art movement.

John Stockton de Martelly (1903–1979) was a lithographer, etcher, painter, illustrator, teacher and writer.

Wilber Moore Stilwell (1908–1974) was an American depression era artist, White House/National Gallery of Art/American Artists Professional League honoree, inventor, patent holder, author, and Chair of Art, University of South Dakota.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thomas Craven</span>

Thomas Craven was an American author, critic and lecturer, who promoted the work of American Regionalist painters, Thomas Hart Benton, John Steuart Curry and Grant Wood, among others. He was known for his caustic comments and being the "leading decrier of the School of Paris."

Joan Elizabeth Woollard, PPRBSA was a Birmingham, England born artist, mainly specialising in sculpture. She was a member of the Royal Society of British Sculptors and a member of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists (RBSA) as well as being its first female President between 1978 and 1980.

<i>Tornado over Kansas</i> 1929 painting by John Steuart Curry

Tornado over Kansas is a 1929 oil-on-canvas painting by the American Regionalist painter John Steuart Curry. It depicts a dramatic scene in which a family races for shelter as a tornado approaches their farm, and has compositional connections to Curry's earlier 1928 painting Baptism in Kansas. The artist is believed to have been influenced by Baroque art and photographs of tornadoes. He developed a fear of natural disasters and a reverence towards God during his childhood, both of which are apparent in the painting.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jack Edward Barber</span> American artist (1918–2003)

Jack Edward Barber was an American artist working in oil, egg tempera, acrylics, watercolor, lithography, and sculpture. 

Aaron Gunn Pyle was an American painter known for his contributions to Regionalist painting. His work is closely tied to the Midwestern United States, the region where he was born and spent most of his life.

References

  1. Diaz-Camacho, Vicky (December 1, 2017). "Largest Kansas City-Area Colleges and Universities". Kansas City Business Journal.
  2. Under the Influence: The Students of Thomas Hart Benton. Marianne Berardi. The Albrecht-Kemper Museum of Art. 1993.
  3. "Benton Hates Museums". Time. April 14, 1941. Archived from the original on February 5, 2008. Retrieved July 29, 2007.
  4. Randy Kennedy (August 18, 2015), Kansas City Art Institute Receives $25 Million Donation New York Times .

39°02′47″N94°34′59″W / 39.046253°N 94.58308°W / 39.046253; -94.58308