Kansas City Art Institute

Impressive exhibits! Well worth the time to meander through. Wide variety of works on display.

I am very impressed with this college. I was here for an educator workshop and it was one of the most amazing experiences. I had the pleasure of attending a week long workshop and lived in the student dorms. The campus is beautiful and the classrooms are located in historic mansions. The studio spaces are state of the art and the equipment is new and extensive. The living center is clean and simple and quite roomy. Security is on site 24/7, just in case your lock yourself out at midnight like I did.Situated between KCs two finest art museums, KCAI is in the best location.This experience made me wish I were 10 years younger and had $40,000 a year. Or if they decide to add an MFA program, I'll look into going there myself.

Almost a year after graduating from KCAI's 4 year program, I might finally be ready write a fair and honest review of my experience there. Initially, I had started this draft while still in school and I was only going to give it two stars, but I think midterms or finals or critiques may have been swaying my views at the time. I was at KCAI from 2007-2011. One thing that makes KCAI so unique is their Foundations Program, which is basically what they call their Freshman year program because it is a very intense, extensive, crash course in all mediums to help you decide what you want to commit to in the following years and pursue your BFA in. I enjoyed every class I took during my freshman year. After the foundations program, I decided to major in Painting. The painting building is the nicest building on campus, if you ask me. It's only a few years old and definitely has the best studio and gallery spaces. My sophomore year, I took David Harrison, who turned out to be one of my favorite teachers at KCAI. His teaching style is a little less conventional and he openly embraces experimentation and nontraditional painting means. I took an elective class with him my senior year and it was equally enthralling. Junior year, I studied under Warren Rosser. At the time, Warren and I butted heads a lot and I had the WORST year of my life, hard critiques, questioning my work, blah blah blah. But in hindsight, I did learn a lot from Warren. Him questioning me and pushing me all of the time really made me learn how to stand up for my work and stop second-guessing what I was doing. He was just teaching with tough love. Most other students adore the ground Warren walks on because he is so well-known in the art world and has definitely made a name for himself. My senior year, Eric Sall stood in for a semester while Julie Farstad was on maternity leave. It was Eric's first time teaching and I am definitely glad that I had the opportunity to work and study with him. There were a few bumps in his teaching techniques, but all in all, I had a good experience with him. Second semester, Julie Farstad came back and it was definitely the best semester of my KCAI years. Julie is simply amazing. She is an outstanding educator. She knows what she is talking about 99% of the time but isn't afraid to admit she doesn't the other 1%. She gives a hearty workload and has high expectations and offers wonderful advice when struggling through your own artistic battles. I don't think I can really put into words how wonderful of a teacher she is. The only teachers I had unpleasant experiences with were adjunct teachers who are all no longer there. The long-term staff is definitely cash king. Some of my favorites were Dwight Frizzell (digital media), Hal Wert (art history), Stephen Cromwell (art history), Rush Rankin (liberal arts), Jordan Stemplemann (liberal arts), Karen Komp (art history)... there are plenty more, but there are my top tops! The campus is clean and beautiful. I lived in the dorms for a year and it was definitely an interesting experience. The rooms are typical dorm rooms. You can have single sex or co-ed floors. Shared bathrooms. Cleaning and maintenance staff is friendly and efficient. The cafeteria was decent when I lived there, but I honestly never ate in there after my freshman year, so I can't vouch for it now. But all in all, I would say I had a good experience at the Kansas City Art Institute and I would recommend the painting program to anyone.

The Kansas City Art Institute is a four-year college of fine arts, but they also have an excellent continuing education department. I cannot speak for the four year program, but the continuing education department offers something for everyone: from youth camps to adults, classes for everything from woodworking to oil painting to Chinese brush painting to cartooning, and a certificate program. The only thing KCAI lacks is an MFA degree program. The website: KCAI.edu is a little confusing, but the staff is very nice, and they have contact information to help you through questions and enrollment if you find the website too unbearable. Alas, it seems they have stopped mailing out a printed catalog.

I attended KCAI between 1965 and 1966 and was planning to major in Industrial Design. Having taken 4 year of art classes in high school in Shreveport Louisiana I had been lucky enough to have gotten a good foundation in art early with dedicated teachers. While in Louisiana I had some newspaper articles written about my art while there. When I first arrived at the Art Institute in 1965, I move into the then new dormitory with a excellent cafeteria and dinning area that impressed me. However, dorm life was a disappointment since I had to share the room with a roommate that had no intentions of finishing the semester and I had one these guys for my first two semesters. Both boys (they never grew up) were always having friends over (who also were quitting) so they were drinking and partying in the room at all hours of the night. I was forced to go downstairs and study in the dinning area to get my work done. I was disappointed in the Art Institute, first in my Foundation Training in that from what art work I saw that my instructors had done reminded me of my first year in high school art. However, I had never liked English or History in high School but I love attending both of these classes taught by Roy Culver (English) and John Burke (History) .My second year I started my major Industrial Design thinking about being a car designer or at least product designer. Again, I was disappointed in the teaching and had a strong feeling that my teacher who was also the Dean John Lotus really had no experience teaching Industrial Design. I also noticed that there were many manufacturing companies in Kansas City at the time that were probably using Industrial Designers but we were never exposed to these companies and those companies more than likely never knew there was a Industrial Design department at the Art Institute.The final straw and the reason I dropped out of the Art Institute was a story told to our Industrial Design class mid term of my second semester. I was already wondering what I was doing at the Art Institute when one morning Dean Lotus came into the classroom with a big smile on his face and told us that he had received a phone call from one of his best students that had graduated the year before and that the student had gotten a great job. After a long story about how great the student had been while a student at the Art Institute our Dean told us that this student had gotten a job in Minnesota with a big manufacture called Church they manufactured toilet seats. I said nothing and finished the class then walked to the Resistor Office and resigned. I was drafted into the Army 90 days later and later sent to Vietnam.I did get the job as an Technical Illustrator and stationed in Saigon where I not only helped put out a magazine there (GRUNT Magazine) that turned out to be quit popular and even today issues are for sale on the internet and even some colleges have it in their archives. I was assigned to a photo unit and we sometimes made ID photos for American construction contractors and after talking to them I decided to change employment directions. When I left Vietnam I when back to LSU in Louisiana and got a degree in Engineering and 4 months after graduation I got a job with a oil company working in New Guinea, I never stopped from that point working in Thailand, Sumatra, Vietnam, Bahrain, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Nigeria. Frist I will say that my early art education taught me to think outside the box that had been an asset in my professional life enabling to solve engineering problems that were though impossible before. I went on to being a Project Manager on my last $6billion project in Nigeria before retiring in Thailand where I am writing this review at 76.

I guess this guy Luke has a brother (Whose a dumb queer) who's still paying back his student loans from this place.I mean, jeeze fuck. He can't afford to pay you back the money with his salary. It's not his fault you never taught him calculus.It's kind of your fault you do not offer calculus.

Love that KCAI exists. I recommend the adult Ed classes. Taught by professionals but still welcoming to novice artists.