Tthe Art Students League on 57th Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue

FULLSCREEN

Courtesy of the Art Students League of New York

     

If the humble five-story building of the Art Students League on 57th Street between Broadway and 7th Avenue was always easy to overlook, now the massive construction site makes it almost impossible to find. Yet behind the scaffolding, the doors of this 140-year-old art school are still open, with a legacy of the most famous artists in America, like Mark Rothko, Hans Hoffman and Ai Weiwei.

Despite its history of famous artists and central Manhattan location, the school has always epitomized the opposite of prestige. Since its founding in 1875, anyone, regardless of artistic ability or background, could study art at the League with minimal or no entrance requirements. Today, they hold about 130 different classes at a time, seven days a week from 8:30 in the morning to 10 at night.

The school is based on an atelier system, which means instructors teach their classes independent from any overarching curriculum; it’s like training at an independent artist’s studio with multiple teachers in the same building.

It’s also one of the most affordable art schools in the city. The average course, which meets 5 days a week is around $230 a month (about $10 dollars a class), and the cost to study as a full-time student is around $3,800 — not bad, considering steep college tuition fees over the last few decades. Since its founding, the League has also maintained their unique payment system, where students sign up for classes by month rather than by semester, which allows students greater flexibility.

The school was founded by a group of dissatisfied students at the National Academy of Design and their teacher, Lemuel Wilmarth. At the time, the Academy was considered the main art school in New York. These students were frustrated by the leadership, elitism and unfair hierarchy, particularly in the preferential treatment for older students at the school and wanted a democratic learning environment. When the Academy proved unsupportive, the young rebels branched out and formed their own school.

In 1875, revolt against prestigious and pretentious art institutions was gaining popularity worldwide. In Paris, Monet, Manet and Cezanne, along with a group of the not-yet-known Impressionists, formed the Salon de Refusee (salon of the refused), which began as a reaction to the Salon, Paris’s main gallery for art exhibition.

The League quickly became the radical school of New York. Marchal Landgren wrote in 1940 that the League was “separated from the tyranny of the Academy; it had grown out of a desire on the part of a group of students to better their education; it was student controlled and managed.”

In 1879, The New York Times deemed this central art hub a “more than ordinary success.” Raymond Steiner would reflect more than a century later in 1999 that “there was hardly a major trend, school or movement that did not involve the League members, not a major figure on the art scene who did not find some nurturing in its classrooms.” Throughout the century, artists like Alexander Calder, Georgia O’Keefee, Norman Rockwell, Man Ray, Jackson Pollock, Lee Krasner, Robert Rauchenberg, Roy Lichtenstien, Mark Rothko, and Cy Twombly have been students at the League.

Wilmarth became the League's instructor and first president, and began teaching in a small room on the top floor in a building on 16th street and Fifth Avenue. By the end of the year, they grew in popularity and expanded to the entire floor. Three years later in 1878, they formalized the institution and become incorporated.

(Courtesy of the Art Students League of New York)

In 1892, the League moved to 215 West 57th Street, where they’ve remained since. Yet, a group of passionate artists alone wasn’t enough to keep this institution running for over a century; the school probably wouldn’t have lasted without securing real estate, for which investors and other patrons played a key role.

In 1885, Howard Russell Butler, an advocate for artists and a former lawyer secured the American Fine Arts Society building, which became the headquarters of the League. George Washington Vanderbilt, the son of William H. Vanderbilt, George, became the League's most distinguished patron, after donating an unexpected sum ($100,000) in 1892.

This French-Renaissance building, designed by Architect Henry Hardenbergh, was designated a New York City landmark in 1968 by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which stated that it has, “a special character, special historical aesthetic interest and value as part of the development, heritage and cultural characteristics of New York City.” It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1980.

There were many ways in which the League was cutting edge in comparison to other art institutions at the time. Amy Werbel, a professor of Art History at the Fashion Institute of Technology, says, “The League was much more egalitarian, offering the same opportunities for men and women which was really uncommon for the 19th century. They ran it as a communal enterprise.”

The school was also unique because it didn’t adhere to or promote to one artistic style. Students chose their own path of study and teachers taught diverse and even conflicting styles like classical and abstract. Tom Otterness, whose work you may recognize from the 14th street and 8th Avenue subway station, studied at the League in the 70s after receiving a scholarship.

"The League was always split between two camps: abstract art and figurative art. It was radical in the sense that there was no authority of one camp or another," says Otterness. "The students would decide which camp they were in. I ended up being in both.”

Werbel said they were also a leader in co-education in art. Their board consisted of roughly equal numbers of men and women, and, “In the 19th century, working from nude models was sex-segregated, but in the early 20th century, the League contributed to important breaks in that tradition.”

(Rudy Bravo)

The League began with a strong emphasis on painting from the model and representation, which they’ve maintained to this day. According to the League’s 1952-53 catalogue, “placing the student on his own is the forerunner of progressive ideas in American education. The only purpose of a student at the League is to study and learn—in a stimulating atmosphere of intense application.”

Students are encouraged to create their curriculum independently and study whichever style, and however they wanted, without a formal commitment and on a monthly payment system. Artists with 40 years of experience work alongside people who are new to art, breeding opportunity for a diverse supportive space of people who are passionate about making art. Today over 2,500 students every month study at the school, and 70% of them are full-time. About half of these students are members. The average age of the student at the League is 43, but that ranges from kids' classes (8-12 years old) to retired students.

As an open and independent school, “founded by artists, for artists,” the League hasn’t traditionally been accredited either. In that sense, it’s not an art school like SVA, Parsons or FIT. Yet, many students have treated the League as a four-year college, and contemporary artists still chose to study there. Ai Weiwei, for example, studied there from 1983 to 1986, after he moved to the States in 1981 and enrolled in Parsons. The League held an exhibition of his teachers in 2014.

The board is largely run by the school’s students; half of the board are required to be members, and they hold regular board meetings. In the beginning, they relied largely on membership fees alone to maintain themselves, making them one of the only independent art schools in the country.

It’s not that this membership based, independently run school never ran into financial problems. In 1943, the League was in danger of being shut down because the war had led to a dramatic decrease in students. Stewart Klonis, the president of the Board of Control at the time, told the New York Times, “The school has always been supported by tuition fees but the normal enrollment of 1,000 has been reduced this year by more than 600.”

In another article that year, the Times wrote that “the influence of the League has been centrifugal on a scale too vast and far-reaching to be calculated” and that “The Art Students League — unendowed, free, governed by its own members — has amply earned the right to a continued existence of service.”

They were able to raise funding and stay open, and throughout the later half of the century they expanded in several ways. In 1995, they received a donation from the family of the late instructor Vaclav Vytacil, and opened up a campus in Sparkill, New York, about 40 miles north of Manhattan, where they run an artist-in-residency program. They also collaborate with the NYC Parks department on public exhibitions; their most recent one installed in Van Cortlandt Park, Bronx.

(Rudy Bravo)

It’s likely that the League has undergone more changes in the last 10 years than the duration it’s been open. In recent years, the Art Students League added a certificate program to their offerings, giving interested students a more formalized, 2-year or 4-year program that requires a year of fine arts experience. The program attempts to formalize the League’s current offerings, compensating for the lack of structure. Others felt the program counters the school’s model of independence and self-study, the very things which have always been the League’s core values.

In March 2016, former students and members of the coalition ASL2025, which was founded after discontent with the financial decisions and management of the League, wrote an open letter to ASL members, stating that the certificate program is a “departure from the core tenets and mission of the League where all students have equal access to work with a qualified instructor and in the same room as the next generation of recognized artists.”

Yet, debates about the curriculum and teaching aren’t the only ones taking place at the League. In 2005, the Art Students League sold 136,000 square feet of their air rights to Extell Development Corporation for $23.1 million dollars. In 2014, they sold an additional 6,000 square feet of air rights for $31.8 million to allow for the cantilever. The building is expected to be over 1,500 feet tall, and Extell plans for it to be the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, positioning the League as a small heel to this hovering tower.

Executive Director of the Art Students League Ira Goldberg and the League’s President Salvatore Barbieri claimed selling the air rights was a one-time only opportunity to ensure the League’s future, get out of long-standing debt and renovate the institution. They claimed the money would allow them to, “add floors to our building, consequently adding additional studios, unveiling skylights that have been covered over for too many years and restoring gallery space and the library.”

Yet, as a non-profit member-run organization, this decision sparked polarized sentiment throughout the League’s members, and many argued that their decision process overlooked the League's bylaws, and that the voting procedure for this decision was misleading. Materials urged members to vote yes to save the financial state of the League by selling the air rights, and that “if you don’t vote, it counts as a ‘no’ vote!” Marne Rizika, one of the key organizers of ASL2025 said in an interview, “The membership has always been an integral participant in establishing the League’s mission and maintaining its principles, but that no longer seems to be the case.”

Though it’s difficult to gauge the future of any educational institution, the Art Students League has been a steady and reliable home for artists in New York City for well over a century, and the school is still a haven for many artists in the city today.

Leeron Hoory is a writer currently based in New York.

Print Sources:
Landgren, Marchal E. Years of Art; the Story of the Art Students League of New York. New York: R.M. McBride, 1940.
Steiner, Raymond J. The Art Students League of New York: A History. Saugerties (NY): CSS Publications, 1999.
Werbel, Amy. The Crime of the Nude: Anthony Comstock, the Art Students League of New York, and the Origins of Modern American Obscenity. Winterthur Portfolio 2014 48:4, 249-282