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- 1Rhode Island School of Design
Rhode Island School of Design was founded in 1877 in Providence, Rhode Island, established in part through the efforts of a group of women affiliated with the Rhode Island Centennial Commission who wanted to create a dedicated school combining fine arts and industrial design education. RISD built a close, formal academic relationship with neighboring Brown University, letting students at both institutions cross-register for courses, a distinctive arrangement giving RISD art and design students access to a full research university's broader liberal arts curriculum. The school has consistently ranked among the very top art and design programs in the country, with particularly strong reputations in industrial design, illustration, and architecture, and its alumni include numerous prominent working artists, designers, and creative directors across major industries. RISD's combination of its founding by 19th-century civic-minded women reformers and its unusual academic partnership with Brown University has made it one of the most highly regarded art and design schools in the country.
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0 - 2Parsons School of Design
Parsons School of Design was founded in 1896 in New York City, and it grew over the following century into one of the most prominent fashion and design schools in the world, eventually becoming part of The New School university system in 1970. The school built an especially strong reputation in fashion design, and its notable alumni include numerous prominent American fashion designers, giving Parsons an outsized influence specifically on the American fashion industry relative to its size as an academic program. Parsons gained significant mainstream visibility through the reality television competition show "Project Runway," which for years prominently featured Parsons as the program's home institution, exposing the school's name and design philosophy to a broad general television audience beyond the fashion industry itself. Parsons School of Design's combination of its outsized influence on the American fashion design industry and its mainstream visibility through "Project Runway" has made it one of the most publicly recognized art and design schools in the country.
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0 - 3Savannah College of Art and Design
The Savannah College of Art and Design was founded in 1978 in Savannah, Georgia, notably later than most other major American art schools, and it grew rapidly by restoring numerous historic downtown Savannah buildings into campus facilities rather than building an entirely new dedicated campus. SCAD distinguished itself with an unusually broad range of specialized degree programs, including animation, game design, and themed entertainment design, subjects that many older, more traditional art schools had not historically emphasized as heavily. The college expanded significantly beyond its original Savannah campus, adding locations in Atlanta and Hong Kong along with online degree programs, growing into one of the largest private art and design schools in the world by total enrollment. SCAD's combination of its distinctive historic-building campus restoration model and its unusually broad range of modern specialized design programs has made it one of the fastest-growing and most expansive art schools in the country.
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0 - 4School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago was founded in 1866, making it one of the oldest art schools in the United States, and it has operated in close connection with the adjacent Art Institute of Chicago museum, giving students direct access to one of the largest art museum collections in the country. The school built a particularly strong reputation in fine arts and has historically emphasized experimental and conceptual approaches to art-making, and its notable alumni include influential figures across painting, photography, and contemporary art more broadly. The school's deep integration with a major encyclopedic art museum is relatively unusual among American art schools, letting students study working artworks spanning thousands of years of art history as a direct extension of their own studio training. The School of the Art Institute of Chicago's combination of its status as one of the oldest American art schools and its unique direct integration with a major world-class art museum has made it one of the most academically distinctive art schools in the country.
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0 - 5Pratt Institute
Pratt Institute was founded in 1887 in Brooklyn, New York by industrialist Charles Pratt, originally established to provide practical, affordable technical and vocational education to working-class students, before evolving over the following century into a prominent art, design, and architecture school. The school built particularly strong reputations in architecture, industrial design, and fine arts, and its Brooklyn location has given students unusually close proximity to New York City's broader creative and design industries compared to schools located outside major urban centers. Pratt's origins as a practical vocational institution founded by a wealthy industrialist reflect a distinctly different founding philosophy than many art schools established primarily around fine arts education, and that practical design orientation has remained part of Pratt's institutional identity. Pratt Institute's combination of its founding by industrialist Charles Pratt as a practical vocational school and its later growth into a prominent architecture and design institution has made it one of the most historically distinctive art schools in the country.
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0 - 6California Institute of the Arts
California Institute of the Arts, commonly known as CalArts, was founded in 1961 through the merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music and the Chouinard Art Institute, with significant funding and involvement from Walt Disney, who envisioned a combined school for all the arts under one institution. The school built an especially strong reputation in animation specifically, and its alumni include numerous influential figures who went on to lead major animation studios, reflecting CalArts's close historical ties to Disney and the broader Los Angeles entertainment industry. CalArts has also built a significant reputation for experimental and avant-garde approaches across music, theater, and fine arts, giving the school a somewhat unusual dual identity spanning both mainstream entertainment animation training and more conceptually experimental artistic disciplines. CalArts's combination of its founding with direct Walt Disney involvement and its outsized influence on the professional animation industry has made it one of the most distinctively positioned art schools in the country.
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