Organization:School of Visual Arts

Short description: art school in New York

School of Visual Arts

Type	Proprietary art and design school
Established	1947
President	David Rhodes
Academic staff	971
Undergraduates	3,871 (Fall 2019)
Postgraduates	690 (Fall 2019)
Location	New York City , New York
Campus	Urban
Affiliations	AICAD
Website	sva.edu

The 209 East 23rd Street building

Close-up of 209 East 23rd Street

The 214 East 21st Street building

West 21st Street buildings

The School of Visual Arts New York City (SVA NYC) is a for-profit art and design college in Manhattan, New York City . It was founded in 1947, and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.

History

This school was started by Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth in 1947 as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School; it had three teachers and 35 students, most of whom were World War II veterans who had a large part of their tuition underwritten by the U.S. government's G.I. Bill. It was renamed the School of Visual Arts in 1956 and offered its first degrees in 1972. In 1983, it introduced a Master of Fine Arts in painting, drawing and sculpture.

The school has a faculty of more than 1000 and a student body of over 3000. It offers 11 undergraduate and 22 graduate degree programs, and is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design.

The interior design BFA is accredited by the Council for Interior Design Accreditation, the art therapy MPS is approved by the American Art Therapy Association, and the art education MA is accredited by the Council for the Accreditation of Educator Preparation.

The school logo was created in 1997 by George Tscherny for its 50th anniversary, and redesigned in 2013.

In 2019 the school began the process of converting to nonprofit, with the SVA alumni organization (which is already an IRS tax-exempt entity) planning to purchase the school from its owners, who are retiring.

Undergraduate departments

• BFA Advertising
• BFA Animation
• BFA Cartooning
• BFA Computer Art, Computer Animation and Visual Effects
• BFA Design
• BFA Film
• BFA Fine Arts
• BFA Illustration
• BFA Interior Design
• BFA Photography and Video
• BFA Visual & Critical Studies

The school has three non-degree granting undergraduate departments: Art History, Honors Program and Humanities and Sciences.

Graduate departments

• MFA Art Writing
• MA/MAT Art Education
• MFA Art Practice
• MPS Art Therapy
• MPS Branding
• MFA Computer Arts
• MA Curatorial Practice
• MFA Design
• MFA Design for Social Innovation
• MA Design Research, Writing and Criticism
• MPS Digital Photography
• MPS Directing
• MPS Fashion Photography
• MFA Fine Arts
• MFA Illustration as Visual Essay
• MFA Interaction Design
• MFA Photography, Video and Related Media
• MFA Products of Design
• MFA Social Documentary Film
• MFA Visual Narrative

Continuing education

The continuing education division offers noncredit courses from most departments; ¿Hablas Diseño?, a selection of advertising, branding, cartooning, copywriting, illustration and marketing courses taught in Spanish; professional development and corporate training courses; and summer residency programs.

The school offers short-term study abroad programs in various creative fields.

Rankings

PayScale included the college in its "Top 10 Art & Design Schools by Salary Potential" list for 2013–2014. It is ranked the 18th among the art graduate schools in U.S. News & World Report, with its MFA Photography, Video and Related Media program ranked the fifth best MFA photography program in the country.

Location and campus

The school has several buildings in the Gramercy Park neighborhood, on Manhattan's east side, and in the Chelsea neighborhood, on the west side. There is a residence hall on Ludlow Street, in the Lower East Side. From 1994 to 1997, it had a branch campus in Savannah, Georgia; this was closed following a lawsuit from the Savannah College of Art and Design.

Library

The library holds books, periodicals, audio recordings, films and other media; the Milton Glaser Design Study Center and Archives, which comprises the collections of Chermayeff & Geismar, Seymour Chwast, Heinz Edelmann, Milton Glaser, Steven Heller, Ed McCabe, James McMullan, Tony Palladino, George Tscherny and Henry Wolf; and the SVA Archives, a repository for materials pertaining to the college's history.

West 21st Street buildings

The building at 133 to 141 West 21st Street, between Sixth Avenue and Seventh Avenue in Chelsea, has studios for drawing and painting classes.

The buildings at 132 and 136 West 21st Street have offices, classrooms and studios for art criticism, art education, art therapy, cartooning, computer art, design, illustration and writing. The building at 132 West 21st Street houses the Visible Futures Lab, a workshop featuring traditional and emerging fabrication technology, which regularly hosts artists in residence.

Theatre

The Theatre is at 333 West 23rd Street, between Eighth Avenue and Ninth Avenue, in Chelsea. It was formerly the Clearview Chelsea West Cinema. It was purchased in 2008, renovated, and reopened in January 2009. Milton Glaser designed the theater's interior and exterior, including the sculpture situated atop its marquee. The 20,000-square-foot (1,900 m²) facility houses two separate auditoriums, one with 265 seats and one with 480, and hosts class meetings, lectures, screenings and other public events. It has also hosted the red-carpet New York première of Ethan Hawke's The Daybreakers and a diverse list of world premières, ranging from Lucy Liu's 2010 feature documentary Redlight, to the 2011 Fox animated comedy Allen Gregory; and the 2012 film The Hunger Games. Community partners that have used the theatre include the Tribeca and GenArt film festivals, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's PlaNYC environmental initiative, and the Mayor's Office of Film, Theatre & Broadcasting. The theater is also home to the Dusty Film & Animation Festival, held annually since 1990, which showcases the work of emerging filmmakers and animators from the college's BFA Film and Video and BFA Animation programs.

Galleries

The school has three gallery spaces: the Chelsea Gallery, at 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor; the Flatiron Gallery, at 133/141 West 21st Street; and the Gramercy Gallery, at 209 East 23rd Street. The galleries show a mix of student and professional art; exhibitions are free and open to the public.

Residence halls

The Ludlow Residence

There are several residence halls available for students at SVA.

• 23rd Street Residence (formerly New Residence), at 215 East 23rd Street, is an apartment-style dormitory reserved for new students.
• Gramercy Women's Residence, at 17 Gramercy Park South, houses only female students. Residents have a shared key to Gramercy Park.
• Ludlow Residence, at 101 Ludlow Street. This residential building opened in 2009, and houses 350 students in 259 single and 47 double rooms.
• 24th Street Residence, is a 146,000-square-foot, 14-story residence hall that opened in August 2016. The site was purchased by Magnum Real Estate Group and 40 North in April 2015 for $32.25 million from the nonprofit International Center for the Disabled. It houses 505 residents in 242 suites, including office space, and serves as the flagship residence hall for the school. It is also the base of operations for the school's Residence Life, International Students Office, Student Affairs, and student government, the Visual Arts Student Association.

Former residence halls

• George Washington Residence, at 23 Lexington Avenue. The school's lease for this building expired in early 2016, leading to its replacement as the school's flagship residence hall with the 24th Street Residence.