Design school

An art school is an educational institution with a primary focus on the visual arts, including fine art, especially illustration, painting, photography, sculpture, and graphic design. Art schools are institutions with elementary, secondary, post-secondary or undergraduate, or graduate or postgraduate programs in these areas. They are distinguished from larger institutions which also may offer majors or degrees in the visual arts, but only as one part of a broad-based range of programs (such as the liberal arts and sciences). France's École des Beaux-Arts is, perhaps, the first model for such organized institution, breaking with a tradition of master and apprentice system when it was formed.

There are four independent art and design universities in Canada, all public institutions. They are Emily Carr University of Art and Design (Vancouver), NSCAD University (Halifax), OCAD University (Toronto), and Alberta College of Art and Design (Calgary).

Emily Carr University has the most active research program among the four with over $15 million in research over the last five years. OCAD University's research intensity has reached $3.2 million in 2011/12. All four schools teach in the major disciplines from painting through to new media and design. Over the last five years, Emily Carr has garnered the most of the major awards for students and alums across the country. The most recent RBC Painting Competition was won by Vanessa Maltese, a graduate of OCAD University.

NSCAD University was founded in 1887 by Anna Leonowens and other Halifax women. The school gained international prominence in the 1970s for innovation in conceptual art under the leadership of Garry Kennedy. In spite of its modest size, Art in America suggested in 1973 that NSCAD was "the best art school in North America", while more recently The Globe and Mail called it Canada's "most illustrious".

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