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The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools…
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Kansas City Art Institute Alumni Walt Disney
Kansas City Art Institute Alumni Walt Disney
The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission.
The Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI) is a private art school in Kansas City, Missouri. The college was founded in 1885 and is an accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design and Higher Learning Commission. The institute has approximately 75 faculty members and 700 students, and offers a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.
The school was founded in 1885 when art enthusiasts formed the "Sketch Club" with the purpose of "talking over art matters in general and to judge pictures." Meetings were originally in private homes and then moved to the Deardorf Building at 11th and Main in downtown Kansas City. The club had its first exhibition in 1887 and 12 benefactors stepped forward to form the Kansas City Art Association and School of Design.
In 1927, Howard Vanderslice purchased the August R. Meyer residence, a Germanic castle entitled Marburg and its 8-acre (3.24 ha) estate at 44th and Warwick Boulevard adjacent to the planned Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. A Wight and Wight addition was added to the building. The residence was later renamed "Vanderslice Hall" and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places along with another building on the campus—Mineral Hall. The campus has since expanded to 15 acres (6.07 ha).
In 1935, painter Thomas Hart Benton left New York City to teach at the school. Among the artists Benton influenced as a teacher at KCAI were Frederic James, Margot Peet, Jackson Lee Nesbitt, Roger Medearis, Glenn Gant, and Delmer J. Yoakum. Though Benton brought attention to the Art Institute, he was dismissed in 1941 after making disparaging references to, as he claimed, the excessive influence of homosexuals in the art world.
In 1992, the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art opened on the west side of the campus. On the occasion of its 130th anniversary in 2015, the Kansas City Art Institute received an anonymous donation of $25 million, one of the largest gifts ever to an American art school. The money will be used to bolster the school's general endowment, improve and renovate its campus adjacent to the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and, in the form of a challenge grant of $6 million, sharply increase the number of scholarships the school is able to give out.
Thomas Hart Benton – Leader of Regionalist art movement; KCAI professor, (1935–1941)
Anne Boyer – Pulitzer Prize Winning Author and Poet
Harold Bruder – Painter (1963–1965)
Christiane Cegavske - Guggenheim Fellow in 2019
John de Martelly – Regionalist Printmaker, (1934–1941)
Jill Downen (‘89 Painting) - Guggenheim Fellow in 2010
Dale Eldred – Sculptor, Environmentalist; Professor and Chair of Sculpture at KCAI (1959–1993)
Ken Ferguson – Ceramicist, KCAI Professor Emeritus, (1964–1996)
Glenn Gant – Regionalist painter, KCAI alumni and student of Benton, KCAI teacher, (1948–1960)
Frederic James – Watercolor Painter, KCAI teacher, (1940–1950)
Rob Roy Kelly - Graphic Designer and Printmaker, Chair of the Graphic Design Department (1964–1972)
Cyan Meeks – Filmmaker and Video Artist
Wilbur Niewald – Watercolor Painter, chairman of the Painting and Printmaking Department (starting 1959), Senior Professor of Painting (the first in the college's history, 1985)
Victor Papanek – UNESCO (United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization) Designer/Mediator; Author; Chair of Graphic Design Department (1976–1980)
John Douglas Patrick – Painter, Draughtsman, KCAI teacher circa 1909–1936, member French Salon 1886–1889, Earned Bronze Medal 1889 Universal Exposition
Stephen Sidelinger – Professor of Design (1972–1989)
Elaine de Kooning – painter and visiting critic (February to March 1965)
Source: Kansas City Art Institute (CC BY-SA)
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