Academies of Art in Europe and the Americas, 1600-1900

A 300-year history of influential artist training academies in more than a dozen countries

This ambitious volume delves into the institutional history of art academies. These academies provided practical training for artists as well as spaces for theoretical discussions and debates as they emerged across Europe and the Americas around 1600 and through their proliferation in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Many were founded under official auspices, with state, ecclesiastical, or monarchical support for the teaching of fine arts. Others originated through private patronage or expanded beyond painting, sculpture, and architecture, competing or merging with trade schools. Complex models for teaching art evolved around the world across an array of institutions, as the European academy model responded to differing regional conditions, including colonial contexts.

Seventeen essays from leading and emerging scholars examine academies from Brazil, Colombia, Italy, France, Germany, Mexico, Turkey, the United States, and beyond. In examining academies of art both within specific political and historical moments and across transnational boundaries, the authors ask nuanced questions about the institutions' goals and rules around membership, addressing issues of race, class, and gender. The picture of art academies that emerges is one of malleable institutions that wrote, reformed, and adapted policies according to local needs.

Published by the National Gallery of Art, Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts/Distributed by Yale University Press