The SAIC Experience

    Freedom to Explore

    Studying sculpture but curious about fashion design? Try it. Want to focus on photography all year? You can. At SAIC, you are free to shape your coursework based on your interests, with guidance from advisors. This interdisciplinary freedom lets you layer media and arrive at new ideas and ways of making. It’s exhilarating. It’s also how artists and designers work today.

    A student working in a studio with cardboard and paper.

    Inspiring Faculty

    More than 700 internationally renowned artists, designers, and scholars make up SAIC's faculty. Your mentors and collaborators, they'll help you build your creative practice and prepare you for life after art and design school. You'll get individualized support and feedback, and you'll learn from each other.

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    Photo courtesy of Mie Kongo

    Iconic Museum

    SAIC is the only art and design school anywhere whose daily teaching resource is the US’s third largest art museum. Classrooms and studios share a building with the museum, giving you free, backdoor access to the galleries and special collections—a source of inspiration for generations of students.

    An image of the staircase in the Art Institute of Chicago.

    Real World Experience

    SAIC has a whole team devoted to making sure you succeed after graduation. They'll help you choose internships that align with your goals—and they’ll work with you to figure out what those are. Plus, along with faculty, they'll help you build professional connections while you're still at SAIC.

    Students meeting potential employers at CAPX's career fair
     A person reading in a bright blue chair with a large bookshelf behind them.
    Libraries and Special Collections

    Immerse Yourself in the Collections

    The Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection gives you access to more than 11,000 publications, from zines to video and audio recordings. It’s one of several special collections at SAIC that offer the resources for in-depth research or to inspire your own work.

    Person giving lecture in front of large projection screen..

    Eddie Opera

    Watch Eddie Opera's artist talk

    Eddie Opara Lecture, Art Institute of Chicago Rubloff Auditorium, October 2019

    Visiting Artists Program

    Get Close to the Stars

    The Visiting Artists Program is where you’ll hear from today's most influential practitioners and thinkers. The program is a platform for new ideas and amazing insights—and visitors often detour through the studio to offer student critiques or join a roundtable discussion.

    Maria Gaspar’s Power of Place

    "A piece of art isn’t just about paint on a surface, it’s about the surface itself. The brick, the dilapidated building, the impact of those textures. The meaning and history of those places changes the outcome of the work." – Maria Gaspar

    Explore
    Artist and professor Maria Gaspar

    Maria Gaspar