School News
At a lecture that took place in the Art Institute's Fullerton Hall, SAIC president Tony Jones, with Columbia College of Art president Warrick Carter, discussed his concerns about the low number of African-American students at art universities today. Jones discussed the presence of African-American artists at SAIC in the past, the percentages of African-American students today, and his hopes for more diversity in the near future.
Tony Jones, with his usual elegance, began the discussion with bits of Chicago's important history, and the Art Institute of Chicago's beginnings as an art institution. He then looked into the eyes of the audience and asked an important question: "Were there actually any African-American students when the college began back in 1880? The answer is yes." He stressed that African Americans played a significant role in the school in the 1880s, although few attended back then.
African-American students started arriving to SAIC in the early 1900s -- all males. Jones commented, "In 1910, teens, and twenties, only two art schools actively sought out African-American students, admitted, and supported by the Negro Art Students Scholarship Fund. SAIC was one and the Art Students League of New York was the other." Jones dropped the names of prominent African-American artists who were students during the early days of SAIC, including William Edward Scott, Alfred East, and "Mark Toby, `a great abstractionist.'"
Jones also talked about the academic benefits that resulted from World War II: the creation of the G.I. Bill in 1942. The G.I. Bill helped 2.2 million veterans attend college. Because of this, 60,000 female and75,000 African-American male students attended college.
In 1947, Jones proudly added, "forty-eight percent [of African-American art students were] attending [SAIC] under the G.I. Bill of Rights." Throughout his speech, Jones featured some African-American students in SAIC classrooms through black and white slides. "For our students who were African American, they were desperately seeking to root themselves in imagined African past, but the school urged them to turn away ... and engage in abstract, avant-garde."
The conclusion of Jones' speech highlighted the new exhibition A Century of Collecting: African American Art in the Art Institute of Chicago that "adds to our teaching program in the school." However, Jones did not focus on how SAIC is presently trying to attract more African-American students.
During a question and answer period, Jones commented that the minority enrollment has remained "flat" and although Asian and Latino students have remained stable in their numbers, the enrollment of African-American students have rapidly gone down.
Image: Mark Tobey talks with fellow students in a fashion illustration class, 1910. Courtesy of Art Institute of Chicago Archives.