Type | Private |
---|---|
Established | 1886 |
President | Jay Coogan |
Academic staff
|
100 |
Undergraduates | 650 |
Location | Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA |
Campus | Urban, 10 acres (4 ha) |
Website | www.mcad.edu |
The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private, nonprofit four-year and postgraduate college specializing in the visual arts. Located in the Whittier neighborhood of Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States, MCAD currently enrolls approximately 700 students offering education in painting, drawing, advertising, entrepreneurial studies, sculpture, printmaking, papermaking, photography, filmmaking, illustration, graphic design, book arts, furniture design, liberal arts, comic art, and sustainable design. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer a major in comic art.
MCAD was founded in 1886 by the trustees of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts and originally named the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts. Douglas Volk (1856–1935), an accomplished American portrait painter who studied in Paris with renowned French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme (1824–1904), became the school’s first president. Its inaugural class was held in a rented apartment in downtown Minneapolis and had an enrollment of 28 students, 26 of whom were women.
In December 1889, the School found a more permanent home on the top floor of the just-finished Minneapolis Public Library at 10th Street and Hennepin Avenue. In 1893, noted German-born painter and educator Robert Koehler (1850–1917) moved from New York to Minnesota to become president of the school. Over the next ten years, he developed much of the curriculum that is known today as the art education field. By the turn of the century, the school had two instructors and had instituted a summer term, in addition to night classes for people in the community. In 1910, the School of Fine Arts changed its name to the Minneapolis School of Art to reflect the new emphasis on applied arts.
In 1915, the school moved to its present location one mile south of downtown Minneapolis, and set up its classrooms and studios within the newly constructed Minneapolis Institute of Arts. The 10-acre (4 ha) site for the art museum and school was donated to the City of Minneapolis in 1911 by prominent local banker and businessman Clinton Morrison (1842–1913). It was formerly occupied by Villa Rosa, the home and estate of Morrison's parents Dorilus Morrison (1814–1897), the first mayor of Minneapolis, and Harriet Putnam Whitmore Morrison (1821–1880). The site of the Morrison's former estate is today held in the public trust under the jurisdiction of the Minneapolis Park and Recreation Board and is officially known as Dorilus Morrison Park.