News

With one student and one teacher, Sarah Kimball opened up her Cleveland home to the first class of the Western Reserve School of Design for Women in 1882. Less than one year later the school incorporated on November 13 beginning a 130-year history of art and design education in what is now the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Within weeks of the school’s incorporation, enrollment outgrew Ms. Kimball’s home and the school moved to the top floor of the City Hall Annex. The school’s original intent was to train single women for ‘fitting occupations’ in the post-Civil War era.

Over the course of its history CIA established the first Industrial Design degree program in the country, launched hundreds of visionary artists and designers including: Marc Brown, Charles Burchfield, Edris Eckhardt, Betty Oros, Charles Salee, Viktor Schreckengost, Julian Stanczak, Clara Driscoll Wollcott, and countless others. Learn more about CIA’s history.