San Francisco Art Institute

San Francisco Art Institute is a private college of contemporary art in San Francisco, California. Founded in 1871, SFAI is one of the oldest art schools in the United States and the oldest west of the Mississippi River. Approximately 400 undergraduates and 200 graduate students are enrolled. The institution is accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and the National Association of Schools of Art and Design , and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design .

The San Francisco Art Institute was established in 1871 with the formation of the San Francisco Art Association—a small but influential group of artists, writers, and community leaders, most notably, led by Virgil Macey Williams and first president Juan B. Wandesforde, with B.P. Avery, Edward Bosqui, Thomas Hill, and S.W. Shaw, who came together to promote regional art and artists, and to establish a school and museum to further and preserve what they saw as a new and distinct artistic tradition which had developed in the relative cultural isolation and unique landscape of the American West.

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