Where Have All the Art Schools Gone?

Columbia College, Chicago, once vaunted as among the “largest liberal arts art college” in the country has seen its enrollment drop by 36% since 2013. Photo courtesy afunkydamsel/highereddive.com

One 2024 discovery: art schools are closing.

In 2024 Philadelphia lost an art school. Actually, two art schools. The occurrence of Philadelphia’s loss made front page news because Philadelphia, a major metropolitan area and regional cultural center, no longer has an independent art school, save one. (1)

Look around. Neither does nearby Washington, DC — the Corcoran School of the Arts and Design has been absorbed by George Washington University. Within the past decade, Chicago has lost two art schools. (2) And Chicago’s Columbia College, once vaunted as among the largest “liberal art colleges of art” in the nation has lost 36 percent of its students since 2013, shrunk its budget and laid off faculty. (3)

San Francisco, Memphis? Where have they all gone? (4)

Add to this the loss of art-related training institutions, for-profit “arts” colleges. (5) Across the country art schools are closing, students are being turned away. A visual art “talent gap” has become a real thing.

To diagnose this trend is to probe America’s public awareness of art education, a history of art movements, and the vicissitudes of a career marketplace in the visual arts. Among “advanced societies,” America has a history of being a borrower of artistic movements and moments, not a leader. The aftermath of World…