The Art Academy of Cincinnati

Date: May 21 2013
Major: Fine Arts - Painting/Sculpture/Photography/etc (This Major's Salary over time)
I have just graduated from the Art Academy and, I have to say, I wish I would have seen this site sooner. I am so beyond disappointed with my education and am terrified of finding a job in my field. Basically, the school itself is going through some "economic issues" and yes, of course, every school is, but the Art Academy has been one of the most conniving institutions I have ever seen in terms of going behind your back and never telling you a thing about it. In the 4 years I attended I believe we've had at least 3 different presidents and 1 interim president. I've seen approximately 10-15 excellent staff/faculty members (I'm talking been there for 30+ years) either get fired, get demoted to adjunct teachers, or quit because of their frustration with the school. One of these teachers happened to be my advisor Junior year and was supposed to be my advisor going into senior year. I was not told until my first day of classes senior year that she would no longer be my advisor, and I was not given the choice to choose my own new advisor, they just assigned me one and handed me a sheet of paper saying it changed. And the faculty that have began replacing the wiser, older, more caring faculty are of a lower maturity level than the students in the school. They hire alumni that are artists trying to make it in the 'art world' and that have thus far failed so they have to resort to teaching. They do not care about the students progression as artists and only consider them competition therefor are threatened by them. Many of the professors use the equipment during class time to work on their own art and get irritated with students when they need help, do something wrong or need to use something the professors already are. The level that the school attempts to prepare you for life outside of school is a joke. I did not learn how to make a resume, write proposal grants, or anything else of the sort (which is all extremely necessary information for working artists to have) until the second semester of my SENIOR YEAR. Also, they hired a staff member who's entire job is supposedly to assist students in finding work outside of school. That's a joke as well. They give busy work to freshman and sophomore students who don't know any better and do absolutely nothing for the seniors who are about to graduate and be on their own. (This is also the same staff member who was allowing underage students to do keg stands at a school party, did nothing to stop them, and is now helping to implement a policy which will not allow drinking at any school functions, including Senior Thesis Exhibitions where the students ARE drinking age, and adults for that matter, and it has always been a custom in every gallery in the art world to serve drinks at art openings) The most help I've gotten in terms of finding out-of-school jobs has been from members of the staff who are not teachers and have nothing to do with the inner workings of the school and that simply helped me from the kindness of their heart. The classes and course work are also laughable. The school requires you have a certain number of credits in the required fields (ie: natural science, social science, etc) but then they only offer maybe 2 or 3 of those classes the entire year. So if you don't like the subject, or if the class is already full, then you're screwed. And when you try to confront a professor or faculty member about it, they tell you to just take a class that would fill that requirement at another school. But when you live 3 blocks from the school and walk there everyday, that's a little much to ask considering the only schools nearby are at least 10-15 miles away. On top of that, the classes (specifically academic) baby students, for the most part. I can honestly say I was only truly challenged and truly learned something in one academic class, and that was because the professor they had for the class was a full time professor at another, real school. Students who did far less work than I did in any of the classes were making the same exact grades I was, so eventually, I stopped trying and realized that you really don't have to try at all to get a passing grade, even a high grade. The studio classes are ran by the principles favoritism. The professors generally have a favorite one or two students and those are the students who get all the opportunities within the school. Even the largest, "best" scholarship you can get at the school, the Wilder Scholarship, is judged by 12 faculty members who would absolutely have a bias for/against certain students. So basically, the way to get ahead, is to be as completely buddy buddy with the teachers as you can. The facilites of the school are also pretty terrible. The school itself is basically a concrete fortress. Most of the walls are impossible to hang anything on using anything other than push pins, and they're always covered in pin holes and paint smudges. Even the walls of the galleries have bends in the walls that you don't see until your trying to hang your senior work. The studios are tiny and are shared by 4 people and at least one of those people will most likely end up irritated because they have to work in front of the windows, which, in many of the studios, leak when it rains. The studios are also open and you are not allowed to put anything up which would block the door so good luck with keeping anything of any value in them unless you want to lock it in your locker every single time you go to get a drink. (I've gotten things stolen from my studio on multiple occasions, and once even from the wall just outside of our studio. The students have no respect for other students' things) All of the computer labs have recently been consolidated into rooms, both of which are used as classrooms at some point throughout the day. The printers are usually either broken, out of ink or out of paper and, although we do have a new team of tech people, they are not always easy to be reached. I hate bashing on the school so much, and I really did love the school and it's facilites freshman year, but the inner workings of the school have just gotten so shady and they make all these changes without consulting anyone beforehand because they think they know what's best for the students when they don't even know them. I just would want somebody to spend as much money as I did, get as far as I did, and then regret every second of it. I wish I would have had someone to tell me how it was when I started. Coming from out of state, I knew nobody from Cincinnati and was completely blind sided. I wouldn't want anyone else to move from 5+ hours away just to hate the school they attend. I think the Academy will change for the better over time, but for right now, you'll just be a guinea pig in their weird experiments.