1961
Walt Disney and his brother Roy O. Disney guide the merger of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, founded in 1883, and the Chouinard Art Institute, founded in 1921. The resulting entity is incorporated as California Institute of the Arts.
1964
Walt Disney introduces his concept for “CalArts” to the public at the Hollywood premiere of Mary Poppins. His presentation includes the short film The CalArts Story. Disney sees the college as part of Los Angeles’ brand-new, world-class cultural infrastructure, alongside the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) and The Music Center.
1966
Following Walt Disney’s death, the Disney family and other benefactors press ahead to bring his cherished vision to fruition. “CalArts is the principal thing I hope to leave when I move on to greener pastures,” Walt had said. “If I can help provide a place to develop the talent of the future, I think I will have accomplished something.”
1967
The Board of Trustees, chaired by H.R. “Bob” Haldeman—of later Watergate infamy as President Richard Nixon’s chief of staff—appoints Robert W. Corrigan, dean of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, as CalArts president. Haldeman also hires fiery iconoclast Herbert Blau, co-director of Lincoln Center’s Repertory Company in New York, as provost.
1968
Using the example of Black Mountain College (1933–1957), Provost Herbert Blau and a core group of faculty design a radical educational model that favors independent artistic work over rigid curricula; collegial relationships within a community of artists over hierarchies of teacher and student; and continuous interaction among the different arts over the self-containment of each discipline—what would become known as “interdisciplinarity.”
1969
Construction of the new CalArts campus begins in the northern LA suburb of Valencia with “The Great Ground Breaking.” The centerpiece of the campus is a five-level, 500,000-square-foot “mega-building” designed by architects Ladd & Kelsey.
1969
As it begins accepting applications, CalArts assembles a high-powered faculty with some of the most innovative and unorthodox voices in the arts. They include artists Allan Kaprow, John Baldessari, Miriam Shapiro, Nam June Paik, and Alison Knowles; composers Mel Powell and James Tenney; electronic music pioneer Morton Subotnick; sitar master Ravi Shankar; ethnomusicologist Nicholas England; choreographers Bella Lewitzky and Donald McKayle; actress Beatrice Manley; designers Peter and Sheila de Bretteville; architect Craig Hodgetts; film director Alexander Mackendrick; experimental filmmaker Pat O’Neill; and animation maverick Jules Engel.
1970
Opening its first, famously chaotic academic year at the interim Villa Cabrini campus (a former all-girls Catholic school) in Burbank, CalArts encompasses six schools: Art, Critical Studies, Design, Film, Music, and Theater & Dance. The wide-ranging work includes John Baldessari’s legendary “Post-Studio” art seminar; Happenings-like performances; classes in computer music alongside those in world music and dance; experiments in video art; and optical composite printing and Fluxus-inspired projects such as underwater music concerts and mushroom-hunting expeditions.
1971
With some classes having already moved to Valencia during the spring, the permanent campus opens in full for the start of fall semester, welcoming more than 650 students.
1971
Faculty Judy Chicago and Miriam Schapiro start the influential Feminist Art Program with students such as Suzanne Lacy (Art MFA 73) and Faith Wilding (Art MFA 73). Its counterpart is the Women’s Design Program, guided by Sheila Levrant de Bretteville. The ensuing breakthrough work includes Womanhouse, a collaborative installation at an abandoned Hollywood mansion.
1975
Following a period of institutional turmoil, during which President Robert Corrigan and Provost Herbert Blau depart, CalArts names Robert J. Fitzpatrick, professor of medieval French literature and dean of students at Johns Hopkins University, as new president.
1975
The School of Film/Video launches the Character Animation Program with a faculty of seasoned Disney veterans. The inaugural class alone contains a remarkable collection of future visionaries: Tim Burton, Brad Bird, Mike Giaimo, John Lasseter, John Musker, Jerry Rees, and Henry Selick.
1977
The New York art scene sees the first wave of CalArts alumni—Jack Goldstein, David Salle, Ross Bleckner, Eric Fischl, Barbara Bloom, James Welling, Matt Mullican, Troy Brauntuch, Ericka Beckman—emerge in force as part of the nascent “Pictures Generation,” alongside artists such as Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Sherrie Levine and former CalArts Art dean Thomas Lawson. As more alums begin arriving in New York at the start of the 1980s, a new term is coined: “The CalArts Mafia.”
1978
Robbie Blalack becomes the first CalArts alumnus to receive an Academy Award when he’s honored as part of the VFX team on Star Wars. Blalack is among a group of CalArtians who use optical compositing and motion graphics, honed as techniques of experimental film and animation, to create groundbreaking FX.
1978
The inaugural Contemporary Music Festival kicks off the annual series that firmly puts CalArts on the international map of avant-garde music. Turning up for the festival each year is a who’s-who of modernist greats—John Cage, Morton Feldman, Milton Babbitt, and Lou Harrison, among others. The series continues through the 1980s.
1983
The Jazz Program is launched by Charlie Haden, the bassist of the legendary Ornette Coleman Quartet and founder of the Liberation Music Orchestra. Within a decade, program alums shake up New York’s downtown scene with a CalArts-specific mix of creative skills and far-reaching musical knowledge, which extends from global traditions to the avant-garde.
1984
CalArts President Robert Fitzpatrick oversees the L.A. Olympic Arts Festival, held in the lead-up to the Summer Olympics. Featuring some 400 experimental and interdisciplinary performances from around the globe, the festival is a landmark in the cultural history of the city as it establishes new professional links—in many cases via the Institute—between the LA and international arts communities.
1986
As Apple co-founder Steve Jobs purchases the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light and Magic (ILM) and renames it Pixar. Alum John Lasseter completes Pixar’s first film, the landmark CG short Luxo Jr.. and becomes the first 3D computer animation to be nominated for an Academy Award.
1987
Robert Fitzpatrick departs CalArts to head Euro Disney in Paris.
1988
Steven D. Lavine, associate director for Arts and Humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation, is appointed president of CalArts.
1989
The Little Mermaid starts the ”Disney Renaissance” as a core group of CalArts alums—including Glen Keane, John Musker, Gary Trousdale, Kirk Wise, Brenda Chapman, Chris Sanders, and Rob Minkoff—lead the way in reviving the animated feature film as an art form. More huge Disney hits follow: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Aladdin (1992), and The Lion King (1994).
1990
Striving to engage more with residents of Santa Clarita and Los Angeles, CalArts launches the Community Arts Partnership (CAP), a youth arts education program with community groups and, later, public schools in underserved neighborhoods across the region. CAP mobilizes CalArts faculty and student-instructors as its teaching corps, offering free arts programs to youth between the ages of 6 and 18, while also providing generations of CalArts student-instructors with hands-on teaching experience and a source of income while in school.
1990
CalArts and Capitol Records begin what becomes an annual collaboration: the production of a CD of original work by students in the Jazz Program, recorded at the legendary Capitol Studios in Hollywood. The series helped boost the profiles of numerous Jazz students on their way into the professional world.
1992
The influential MOCA exhibition Helter Skelter: L.A. Art in the 1990s confirms that LA has grown into one of the most vibrant centers of artmaking in the world. The show includes the work of alumni Mike Kelley, Jim Shaw, Meg Cranston, Liz Larner, and Lari Pittman—all artists who chose to stay in LA in the 1980s instead of moving to New York like their CalArts predecessors.
1994
The Institute sustains damages totaling more than $15 million during the Northridge Earthquake. In the aftermath, classes continue in trailers and off-campus sites during the spring semester. Major reconstruction on campus is completed ahead of the fall semester.
1995
Trumpeter, bandleader, A&M Records co-founder and philanthropist Herb Alpert teams with CalArts to establish the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts—five unrestricted $50,000 fellowships given each year to “early mid-career” artists in the fields of dance, film/video, music, theater, and visual art. The juried awards are administered by CalArts on behalf of The Herb Alpert Foundation.
1995
At Pixar Animation Studios, John Lasseter and CalArts colleagues Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter and Joe Ranft usher in the era of CG animation with the hit feature film, Toy Story. It earns Lasseter a Special Achievement Academy Award.
1995
Having been earlier elevated from the rank of “Division,” the new School of Critical Studies launches the MFA Creative Writing Program as its first degree-granting course of study.
1996
The Center for Integrated Media launches, offering a supplemental concentration, Integrated Media (IM), for MFA students who work with digital, interactive, and participatory media across disciplines.
1997
As plans take shape for the Frank O. Gehry-designed Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, Roy E. Disney—Walt Disney’s nephew—provides initial funding for a separate CalArts performance space and gallery: the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), named in memory of Roy E. Disney’s parents. The new venue would give the Institute a presence in the heart of the city—in line with Walt Disney’s original vision for CalArts.
1999
The School of Theater inaugurates the Center for New Theater (CNT) as its professional producing arm. Its role is to develop creatively ambitious new work while linking CalArts students with the professional community. CNT debuts with Bad Behavior, by Richard Foreman with Sophie Haviland. CNT eventually becomes the Institute-wide Center for New Performance.
2001
CalArts launches an MFA Writing for Performance Program, with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Suzan-Lori Parks as director.
2002
The School of Art and Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design in London join forces to publish the art journal Afterall. This partnership continues until 2010.
2003
REDCAT, the Institute’s downtown center for the presentation of contemporary arts, kicks off its inaugural season. Its multidisciplinary programming divides into three parts: established artists and companies of national and international standing; emerging new voices, including CalArts alumni from across Southern California; and brand-new projects developed at the Institute. The Huffington Post soon hails REDCAT as “the gold standard of the avant-garde in L.A.”
2004
The School of Theater embarks on a new annual tradition by dispatching a contingent to Scotland to stage original work at the famous Edinburgh Festival Fringe. This ongoing participation allows CalArts students to present to international audiences and make professional connections with counterparts from around the globe.
2004
The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance is dedicated in memory of the longstanding CalArts benefactor, the late daughter of Walt Disney.
2004
The MFA Creative Writing Program publishes the first issue of Black Clock, a literary journal edited by faculty member Steve Erickson. “Audacious rather than safe, visceral rather than academic,” Black Clock is the Institute’s idiosyncratic West Coast answer to Conjunctions. The journal continues until 2016.
2006
CalArts becomes the first American film school honored with a full retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. The sweeping three-month, 39-program survey, Tomorrowland: CalArts in Moving Pictures, covers 35 years of film, video art, and animation made at the Institute. MoMA calls CalArts “one of the truly successful experiments in American arts education.”
2007
The Center for New Theater expands into the CalArts Center for New Performance (CNP) to develop production of new music, dance and interdisciplinary performance in addition to projects in theater. CNP makes CalArts not only an institution for training professional artists but also an originator of professional work. Its premiere production at REDCAT is What to Wear by Richard Foreman and Michael Gordon.
2007
CalArts breaks ground for The Wild Beast, a variable-use, indoor-outdoor music pavilion designed by Hodgetts + Fung, the facility is named after composer Morton Feldman’s metaphor for the ineffable generative force in art.
2008
CalArts inaugurates The Herb Alpert School of Music following an historic $15 million endowment gift from Herb Alpert and Lani Hall, who had already donated $10 million since the early 1990s. CalArts also announces its first-ever doctoral program: the Doctor of Musical Arts (DMA) Performer-Composer Program.
2008
The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance unveils The NEXT Dance Company, a resident ensemble that each year comprises the entire graduating class. The company’s aim is to mirror the professional experiences students are likely to encounter after graduation.
2008
The School of Critical Studies enrolls the first students in the Master of Arts (MA) Aesthetics and Politics Program. Its first class includes architect, writer and activist John D’Amico (Critical Studies MA 09), who promptly goes on to win election to the City Council of West Hollywood.
2010
The Wild Beast opens in the spring as The Herb Alpert School of Music’s premier concert venue. In addition to supporting classes and rehearsals, the facility can be configured into a band shell for outdoor concerts.
2010
The School of Art rolls out East of Borneo, an online magazine of contemporary art and its history, as considered from an LA perspective. It publishes original essays, artist profiles and interviews alongside a “collaborative archive” of videos, images and historical texts, added by both editors and readers to prompt new connections and lines of thought.
2011
The Herb Alpert School of Music opens the Machine Lab, a research facility dedicated to the development of robotic musical instruments and new performer-computer interfaces.
2013
CalArts joins with online education leader Coursera to offer its first MOOCs (massive, open online courses), representing, at the time, the only comprehensive arts college among Coursera’s elite higher-ed partners.
2014
Vanity Fair magazine’s annual “Hollywood issue” offers an in-depth look at the first years of the storied Program in Character Animation. The feature includes a tableau, by photographer Annie Leibovitz, of the CalArts alumni who redefined the art of story animation.
2017
Ravi S. Rajan, Dean of the School of the Arts at Purchase College, is appointed president of CalArts.
2020
The global COVID-19 pandemic forces the Institute to suspend all in-person classes, activities, and performances in March. CalArts pivots to online instruction for the remainder of the year through Fall 2021.
2020
Philanthropist Eileen Harris Norton honors artist and Art faculty (now faculty emeritus) Charles Gaines with a $5 million gift to create the Charles Gaines Faculty Chair. The gift provides support to Black and underrepresented faculty in the School of Art. Gaines also provides an initial donation, along with two lead gifts from Jill Kraus and David Kordansky (Art BFA 12), to establish the Charles Gaines Fellowship that provides critical scholarship support for Black students in the Institute’s MFA Art program.
2021
The New York-based Posse Foundation announced a new partnership and pilot program with CalArts to foster a diverse pipeline of leaders in the creative arts. Developed with the Miranda Family Fund, the Posse Arts Program brings arts- and culture-focused students to CalArts. The first cohort of Arts Posse Scholars begins their CalArts journey in fall 2022.
2021
CalArts purchases the Vista Village complex across Tournament Road to house administrative units, enabling the expansion of student-centric activities in newly vacated space in the Main Building. The Institute also purchases a new building in downtown Los Angeles to house REDCAT staff as well as the historic Cattern House in South Pasadena that will be used to host a wide range of events for the CalArts community and the public.
2023
CalArts celebrates its (pandemic-delayed) 50th anniversary celebration. Nearly 2,000 people attend an immersive, three-day festival that includes the annual World Music Festival, Art Open Studios, dance and theater performances, and immersive happenings featuring 75+ artists.
2023
After a massive flood in 2021, the A-Block—home to the Character Animation program and the Gamelan Room—reopens for classes. The two-year renovation project involves nearly 25,000 square feet of classrooms, studios, and offices, as well as an expansion of the interior balcony, a new catwalk connecting the north and south studios, a modernized elevator, an extension at the east-facing balcony, and 500 square feet of new outdoor landscaping.
2024
CalArts and Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) announces a formal affiliation in the ongoing delivery of transformative arts education at the undergraduate and graduate levels. The affiliation brings CalArts support to VCFA, the nation’s only college devoted entirely to graduate fine arts education, while enabling VCFA to retain its accreditation and maintain academic independence. VCFA’s semiannual residencies, a hallmark of the college’s multidisciplinary, low-residency master of fine arts programs, will be hosted on CalArts’ campus beginning in January 2025.