Jacob Burckhardt. Will Barnet and students printing at the Art Students League., 193-. Will Barnet papers, 1897, 1929-2016.
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
Louise Bourgeois and Alexander Calder and Maurice Sendak and Donald Judd. And Augustus Saint-Gaudens.
Roy Lichtenstein and Louise Nevelson and Georgia O’Keeffe and Jackson Pollock. And Norman Rockwell.
The Art Students League of New York’s notable former students and teachers is the “who’s who” of American art history.
Hans Hofmann and Norman Lewis and Faith Ringgold and Maxfield Parrish. And Mark Rothko.
Talk to leadership at the League on the occasion of its 150th anniversary coming up on June 2nd, 2025, and it’s not the staggering roll call of painters and sculptors and illustrators who have walked through the doors they want to highlight. It’s the League’s unique educational model.
“In some ways, it’s like the American dream,” Michael Hall, Executive Director at the Art Students League of New York, told Forbes.com. “Anyone can come in and decide they want to study to be an artist. If you want to be an artist, we’re going to take you in, and we’re going to work on it. You might not be the most successful artist, but you’re going to be an artist.”
At the Art Students League there is no application for entry. No entrance exams. No prerequisite qualifications for admission. No grades or exams or syllabi. No graduation or degrees. Enrollment is open. Anyone can enter the building, register for a class, and within minutes, start taking classes.
Classes like “Sculpture–Carving in Stone,” “Painting from Life,” or “Comic Book Figure Drawing.” Roughly 100 different classes and workshops, open to the public, seven days a week, starting before 9:00 AM and going long past 10:00 PM. Classes taught “atelier style,” with instruction from successful professional artists in working art studios.
The most amazing aspect of these classes, however, is the cost. “Drawing Animals:” $195.70. “Lithography, Etching, Linocut:” $401.70. “Ceramics Sculpture:” $302.82. Those are the prices for full-time students. In Manhattan, mind you.
“I think of the Art Students League as one of the most important student movements in the history of American education because its origins are in a student movement where people who were dissatisfied and thinking about alternative ways of organizing and structuring their education took it upon themselves to create–with very little means–a visionary alternative,” Stephanie Cassidy, Head of Research & Archives at the Art Students League, told Forbes.com. “Still to this day, 150 years later, it is a distinctive form of training artists that was fundamentally egalitarian.”
Artists and instructors like George Bellows and Thomas Hart Benton and Stuart Davis and Alice Neel. And Calvin Klein.
Art Education: Affordable And Accessible
Myra Albert Wiggins. Augustus Saint-Gauden’s Class at Art Students League 1892 or 1893, 1892 or 1893. Art Students League records, 1875-1955.
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
On June 2, 1875, a group of art students launched the radical idea of creating their own school designed for and run by independent artists. Breaking away from the National Academy of Design, they formed the Art Students League of New York.
Today, the League continues offering affordable, accessible pathways to a high quality, fine art education to students of all backgrounds and experience levels.
“One of the principles of the founders that was deeply felt and has been infused throughout its history is the idea of anyone can come in at any time and enroll, and that really it’s the student’s initiative that’s crucial in determining the course of their education,” Cassidy said. “The league started out as a grassroots learning group, not really a school. They didn’t even use the terminology school in their constitution to start. Come as you are, pay what you can. It stands in sharp contrast to what the National Academy’s model was, which was a structured, hierarchical sequence of courses for people who would be vetted.”
The membership owns the school. Tuition is subsidized for everyone. No one is turned away.
“Artists who came through here on a scholarship (include) James Rosenquist and Norman Rockwell,” Hall explains. “They were house painters. What would they have done otherwise until they came here? More contemporary artists like Tschabalala Self, she got a scholarship from a community event we were doing, came in, started taking some figure study. We supported the GI Bill, Robert Rauschenberg.”
Rauschenberg had his Art Students League classes paid for by the federal government through the G.I. Bill. And Cy Twombly.
Could the League have raised prices? Of course. Made more money. Of course. Joined the crowd offering bachelor’s and master’s degrees, operated more like a corporation, paid a president seven figures, appointed a bunch of wealthy patrons and influential politicians as trustees. Of course.
“We’re here to make enough money so that we can keep the doors open and keep the classes and tuition low,” Hall said. “It’s a wonderful, altruistic goal to say that we want to be here for our artists. It’s a place that started by artists for artists, and no one here is really going to make a profit on all of this. We’re just going to make better artists.”
Better artists being made by instructors like Thomas Eakins and George Grosz and Robert Henri and Will Barnet. And Romare Bearden.
African American and international and immigrant instructors–unusual 100 years ago–teaching male and female students from all backgrounds and walks of life, still, in many cases, unusual today.
The results speak for themselves.
Eva Hesse and Ai Weiwei and Barnett Newman and Yayoi Kusama. And you.
Art Students League 150th Anniversary Celebrations
Kenyon Cox with his Art Students League class, circa 1887. Allyn Cox papers, 1856-1982.
Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
The Art Students League of New York marks its 150th Anniversary with special exhibitions, programming, and events celebrating the institution’s history in shaping the trajectories of American art and the vital role it continues playing in shaping the artists of tomorrow.
The anniversary programming begins with a dynamic slate of special exhibitions exploring the school’s legacy and impact, on display in public spaces throughout the League’s landmark building at 215 W. 57th Street, two skinny blocks south of Central Park. “150 Years: A Portrait of the League” (on view through May 11, 2025) presents a multi-faceted portrait of the League over the last 150 years, including its instructors, members, staff, and the studios where these artists gathered.
To mark the League’s official 150th Anniversary on June 2, the League will host a series of events in a weekend-long celebration. The lineup for Homecoming Weekend includes the opening of the special exhibition “Shaping American Art: A Celebration of the League at 150” on Thursday, May 29; the annual Dream Ball on Friday, May 30; and a Homecoming Celebration on Saturday, May 31, which will include free art classes open to the public!
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Reference librarian Catherine Latimer, with a group of school children visiting the Schomburg Collection of Negro Literature and History in the 1940s, viewing sculptor Pietro Calvi’s bust of “Othello.”
Courtesy of The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
New York’s other landmark cultural anniversary takes place in Harlem where the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture kicks off its 100th anniversary on May 8th, 2025. A year-long celebration includes a major exhibition, a summer festival, book giveaways, new programming, and a limited edition library card. Exactly 100 years ago on May 8, 1925, the Center’s forerunner—the Division of Negro Literature, History, and Prints at the 135th Street Branch Library—opened its doors at the height of the Harlem Renaissance.
The exhibition “100: A Century of Collections, Community, and Creativity” will feature iconic objects including Aaron Douglas’s murals “Aspects of Negro Life” and Pietro Calvi’s sculpture “Ira Aldridge as Othello,” manuscript pages from Maya Angelou and Malcolm X, the visitor book from the 1925 opening (signed by Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and artist Augusta Savage) and collection items exemplifying the Schomburg’s legacy of librarianship from Romare Bearden, James Baldwin, James Van Der Zee and more. An exhibition audio guide is narrated by actor, producer, author, and literacy champion LeVar Burton and Schomburg curators.
Also beginning on May 8th, patrons can take home their own piece of Black history with a special-edition library card depicting the Center’s cosmogram Rivers. The card will be available at all New York Public Library branches while supplies last. Branches will also give away copies of the children’s book “Schomburg: The Man Who Built a Library,” a picture book detailing Arturo Schomburg’s vision to create the archive that would found the Schomburg collection.
On June 14th, The Schomburg Center continues celebrations and begins a robust new programming season with a Centennial Festival combining the Center’s two largest annual events—the Black Comic Book Festival and the Schomburg Literary Festival—into an all-day, public gathering of authors, booksellers, artists, readers and fans in celebration of Black literature and imagination. The festival will feature readings, panel discussions, workshops, children’s storytimes, cosplay, a vendor marketplace, and a mobile library. The day will close out with musical performances by Slick Rick and Soapbox Presents during an old-school block party.
More From Forbes
