Program areas at AIC
The school of The Art Institute of Chicago (saic) is an accredited college of Art and design offering undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate degree programs for studio artists, Art educators, Art therapists, designers, writers, and Art historians. Saic's fine arts graduate program is ranked number two in The nation by u.s. news and world report, and The school offers world-class resources including The Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities. In fiscal year 2020, average academic year full-time-equivalent enrollment of degree-seeking students was 3,132 with international students from 79 countries.
The Art Institute of Chicago shares its singular collections with our city and the world. We collect, care for, and interpret works of art across time, cultures, geographies, and identities, centering the vision of artists and makers. We recognize that all art is made in a particular context, demanding continual, dynamic reconsideration in the present. We are a place of gathering; we foster the exchange of ideas and inspire an expansive, inclusive understanding of human creativity. The museum achieves this through building and stewarding its renowned permanent collection, producing educational programming around the collection with performances, gallery tours, lectures, readings, and other special events, and presenting world class exhibitions highlighting both its collection and objects loaned from other institutions. In FY20, because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, some of this work moved online, but our presentation and interpretation of the collection continued unabated. Before the closure, exhibitions featured within FY20 included Andy Warhol-From A to B and Back Again, El Greco: Ambition and Defiance, The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster, and In a Cloud, In a Wall, In a Chair: Six Modernists in Mexico at Midcentury. Attendance for FY20 exceeded 1.09 million visits.