History
The Minneapolis College of Art and Design was founded in 1886, the year Diego Rivera was born, Emily Dickinson died and the Statue of Liberty was unveiled. Using a rented apartment in downtown Minneapolis as a campus, a single teacher taught four classes in drawing and painting. The inaugural class contained 28 students--26 of them women. Tuition for each course varied from $2 to $12 a month.
In those early days the College was called the Minneapolis School of Fine Arts, and was brainchild of the Minneapolis Society of Fine Arts, founded three years earlier. "The aim in founding the school," the Society directors wrote, "is to offer here at home the same kind and grade of facilities offered in the best American arts schools (for) the training of persons devoting themselves to art as a profession, to diffusing the principles of art, and to the cultivation of the public tastes."
In December 1889, the School found a more permanent home on the top floor of the just-finished Minneapolis Public Library. 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.
On January 7, 1915, The Minneapolis Institute of Arts opened its doors, and the School was moved from its cramped quarters at the Library to the MIA's ground floor. But even this new space was still too small, and in September of 1915 Ethel Morrison Van Derlip and her brother, Dr. Angus Washburn Morrison, pledged $50,000 for a brand new building, to be named in honor of their mother, Julia Morrison. Designed by Edwin H. Hewitt, a former MSFA president, the Morrison Building boasted three large painting studios with skylights, administrative offices, studios and an auditorium.
In the late 1920s, under the guidance of Director Edmund J. Kopietz, a drawing instructor from the Art Institute of Chicago, the School began revising its strict academic curriculum. Kopietz felt that the same principles guided all creative arts, and so the first-year program should serve both fine arts and design students. Thus, new students took drawing, figure study, design, composition, still life, lettering, modeling and art history. Despite these changes, the mission of the School remained strongly vocational.
By the 1960s, the School's philosophy had undergone a profound shift away from its long-held vocational objectives. A Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program had been established and accredited. A design wing had been added to the Morrison Building, and the School had decided to establish its own curriculum in the humanities and sciences. In 1963, new director Amold Herstand wrote, "Not only will we have trained painters or sculptors, we'll have trained creative problem solvers."
In 1970, The Minneapolis School of Art became the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Enrollment was almost 600 students. The College desperately needed new academic and student service facilities. A new College building was designed by the late Japanese modernist architect Kenzo Tange as part of the new "arts complex" that included The Children's Theatre Company and an addition to the MIA. Construction of the new building was completed in 1974. Studio classes that had once been housed in neighborhood buildings found a new home. A media center for photography, video and film production was created, and the library was moved to campus from the MIA.
On July 1, 1988, the College became a wholly independent institution, no longer governed by the MSFA. Enrollment crept to 713 students. Fifty-eight full-time and 45 part-time faculty members taught classes ranging from performance art to painting, architecture to interior environments, photography to sound.
Today, more than 700 students from 29 states and 12 foreign countries are enrolled at MCAD: 50 percent of the students are enrolled in design, 25 percent in media arts and 25 percent in fine arts. The student body is evenly divided between men and women and the average student is 21 years old. Two more degree programs have been added: an interdisciplinary, mentor-based Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies, and an innovative Bachelor of Science degree that merges creative and business studies.
Throughout its history, MCAD has been characterized by innovation and experimentation. For more than a century, the College has embraced new disciplines and new ways of teaching, and remains committed to self-evaluation and improvement as it looks ahead to another century as one of the finest art educational facilities in the country.