California Institute of the Arts

The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia, in Los Angeles County, California. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the performing arts.

It is authorized by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) to grant Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in the visual, performing, and as of 1994, literary arts. The Herb Alpert School of Music was accredited in 2009 to grant a Doctor of Musical Arts.

The school was founded and created by Walt Disney in the early 1960s and staffed by a diverse array of professionals.

Programs:

CalArts offers degree programs in music, art, dance, film and video, animation, theater, puppetry, and writing. Students receive intensive professional training in the area of his/her career purpose without being cast into a rigid pattern. Its focus is in interdisciplinary, contemporary art, and the Institute's stated mission is to develop professional artists of tomorrow- artists who will change their field. With these goals in place, the Institute encourages students to recognize the complexity of political, social and aesthetic questions and to respond to them with informed, independent judgment.

• School of Art
• School of Critical Studies
• The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance
• School of Film/Video
• The Herb Alpert School of Music
• School of Theater:

Ranking

Newsweek/Daily Beast Ranks CalArts as Nation’s Most ‘Artistic’ College. The Institute was named the number one most artistic school in the country, followed by Emerson College and Berklee College of Music.

View Larger Map