The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
36 S. Wabash #1201
Chicago IL 60603
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has opportunities for artists who want to earn course credit, broaden their creative experience, and engage with our renowned instructors, influential visiting artists, inspiring peer community and Chicago, our vibrant urban campus.
In addition to our course offerings across all departments, we have added summer intensives to provide the opportunity for students to immerse themselves in relevant topics in contemporary art and design and work with our renowned faculty and visiting artists. Join peers from around the world, access our cutting-edge facilities, and discover Chicago’s vibrant cultural community.
Housing options are available.
Grow / Light / Communities
(Architecture, Interior Architecture and Designed Objects)
August 1–19, Monday–Friday 9am–4pm
Throughout the community-based course located at Homan Square, students will learn how nature inspires and reacts to design, while developing design proposals for horticultural grow-light pavilions. The workshop intends to be a platform introducing students to interdisciplinary design approaches including site-specific research, development, construction and more. This course envisions how design can transform and activate sites into fertile ground for creativity, innovation, and social interaction.
Understanding Flexible Art Worlds
(Arts Administration Policy)
July 11–29, Monday–Friday 9am–4pm
Instructors: Adelheid Mers
Those who create arts businesses, operate arts organizations and participate in the work of arts institutions shape how a significant part of culture is produced. By articulating and enacting plans, missions, programs and policies, professional and volunteer cultural workers advance rationales that materialize as specific opportunities, support, production, presentation and dialogue. These activities are driven by multiple interests, embedded in popular, economic and academic discourses, enacted variously at local, national and global scale. Drawing on contemporary examples and including experience contributed by seminar participants and visiting lecturers, this intensive course, geared towards artists and administrators, will lay out a foundation on which to assess the many positions currently active in cultural networks.
Drawing Institute: Summer Residency
(Painting and Drawing)
July 11–29, Monday–Friday 9am–4pm
Instructors: Eric Lebofsky, Erin Washington, and artist in residence Michael Cline
This team-taught class is an intensive, three-week immersion in drawing. Students investigate drawing as a technique and consider it in terms of a language that is used to structure ideas. The faculty consists of two SAIC faculty members and a visiting-artist-in-residence, working in a studio alongside students. Students work with faculty one-on-one, participate in group critiques, and attend lectures prepared by the faculty members.
Individual studios are provided to each student enrolled in this course.
Abandoned Practices Institute
(Performance)
July 11–29, Monday–Friday 9am–4pm
Instructors: Mark Joseph Jeffery, Lin Hixson, and Matthew Goulish
This class looks forward by looking backward, researching, enacting, and embodying practices that for one reason or another have been disregarded in the wake of progress, and relegated to the archives of history. Students will participate in individual and collaborative projects involving writing, installation, documentation, and live performance. Teachers and visiting scholars will lecture on related subjects.
Read more about the summer intensives here.
Register for our summer intensives using our Student At Large Registration form
Art Institute of Chicago Museum members get a 10% discount off all ACE courses and SAIC alumni get a 25% discount.
Questions? Give us a call at T 312 629 6170 or email us at [email protected].
