Start Here
Undergraduate
Develop your creative practice and prepare for the complex world you'll enter after graduation.
Graduate
Study rigorously, form long-term connections, and lay the foundation for your success.
Youth & Continuing Studies
SAIC offers programs for students beginning at age four—from certificate programs to family summer camps.
A Faculty of Mentors
Every SAIC faculty member is an active practitioner in their field. The classes they teach emerge from their unique research and practices, and they’re passionate about what they’re sharing. You'll learn from their individual guidance and feedback, and gain a deeper understanding of the artist’s process.
As the Stephanie and Bill Sick Professor of Fashion, Body and Garment, Cave's explosive work blends cultural research, fashion, sculpture, and sound—most famously in his Soundsuits.
Artist, curator, and critic, Grabner co-curated the 2014 Whitney Biennial and contributes regularly to Artforum. She is the Crown Family Professor in Painting and Drawing.
Elkins writes about the history and theory of images in art, science, and nature. The Emily Crane Chadbourne Chair in Art History, he’s interested in experimental approaches to art history writing.
Taylor researches contemporary art from Southeast Asia, where she lived for almost 10 years. She is the Alsdorf Professor of South and Southeast Asian Art History at SAIC.
An educator who explores what we expect from art and why, Raskin is the Mohn Family Professor of Contemporary Art History. He’s the author of a pioneering text on seminal artist Donald Judd.
An artist and curator, Lowe is the John and Neville Bryan Chair in Historic Preservation. He’s exploring landscape as an artifact of social and cultural conditions, and the nature of truth in the museum.
The SAIC Experience
- Freedom to Explore
- Inspiring Faculty
- Iconic Museum
- Real World 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Eddie Opera
Watch Eddie Opera's artist talk
Eddie Opara Lecture, Art Institute of Chicago Rubloff Auditorium, October 2019
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
Maria Gaspar
The Artist
Maria Gaspar
Image Credit: Zeltzin Vazquez
The Inspiration
Walking through Chicago’s Little Village, Gaspar began to reflect on what it meant to have the largest architecture of the neighborhood she grew up in be the Cook County Department of Corrections. “I had this moment of reflection, thinking there’s something we can do here to radically transcend this place of detention. This could be something powerful.”
Maria Gaspar, Unblinking Eyes, Watching, 2019, vinyl adhesive. Photo: Claire Britt
The Work
In Unblinking Eyes, Watching, Gaspar printed high-resolution images of the north end of the jail to scale and plastered them onto the wall of the Chicago Cultural Center. In this work, Gaspar forces the viewer to think about the presence and proximity of these detention sites and our own relationships to power.
Close-up of Unblinking Eyes, Watching. Photo: Claire Britt
The Process
At SAIC, Gaspar wants her classroom to be an inclusive and inspiring place. “Teaching and learning is such a magical and transformative process and it must include justice. Working with others, whether it be people on my block, in another neighborhood, or at SAIC, it’s an opportunity to engage, to understand one another, and to challenge the systems that continue to divide and oppress."
An artist leans against a table in a large, modern studio
What Is This?
Letterpress? Foundry? 3-D Printing? Check.
From a foundry to digital outputting, the range of resources you’ll find at SAIC provides the comprehensive environment to dive deep into your creative practice and refine your craft. Check out the slideshow to get a taste of the options available or take a virtual tour.
On Campus Foundry
Pour and cast hot metal. Undergraduates have foundry access at SAIC—a rarity.
Laser Cutters
Design and cut—anything from wood and plastic to fabric and paper—in the prototyping lab.
3D Scanners and Printers
Create digital models for your animation or other project using a handheld or tabletop scanner.
Digital Jacquard Loom
SAIC has two of these high-tech machines, which let you rethink tapestry using imaging software.
Blaauw Kiln
Digitally control your kiln’s temperature for precise glazing effects.
DSLR and Medium-Format Cameras
Check out high-end gear for still image and HD video production.
Letterpress
Set hot type and and discover a new set of possibilities in your text-and-image projects.
