Kansas City Art Institute

Welcome to the Kansas City Art Institute. We are glad you are here. We want to get to know you and work with you to create a personal path for your future.
KCAI provides a rigorous, diverse curriculum and an immersive studio experience for students passionate about the realization of their ideas. Of all the schools you will explore, we are confident that none offers more personal guidance, artistic tools, and resources, or opportunities for creative stimulation than you will find here.
No question, the Kansas City Art Institute has the most beautiful, visually inspiring campus of any art and design school in the country. But that is not the reason that ambitious artist should insist on coming here. The real motive is more fundamental. It is about fashioning an idea into matter. KCAI is, above all, a makers' school.
Our faculty recognizes the need for all tools – traditional and digital – to facilitate the teaching and creative process. We know students still want to learn how to make things. KCAI offers exceptional resources for both handcrafting and digital production, including a woodworking shop, kilns and, individual studios to facilitate physical construction, along with a state-of-the-art digital studio in the center of campus that houses highly sophisticated, 21st-century instruments, such as 3-D printers, a digital loom, and CNC routers.
Finally, it is an enormous advantage that KCAI is uniquely situated between two exceptional art galleries—a world-class encyclopedic museum and a renowned contemporary art museum. Here, students can intimately experience the latest contemporary art trends on one side of campus and collections of Impressionist paintings or ancient Chinese sculptures on the other.
KCAI is a studio between two showrooms—a place where passionate students can learn to transform powerful concepts into works worthy of notice, even acclaim.
The mission of the Kansas City Art Institute is to prepare gifted students to transform the world creatively through art and design.
The vision of the Kansas City Art Institute is to be an innovative leader in art and design education. In 1885, an enterprising group of Kansas Citians with a mutual appreciation for art decided formed a Sketch Club. They had no idea this Sketch Club would lay the groundwork for an institution that would become a distinguished four-year college of art and design.
Notable names associated with the Kansas City Art Institute include Walt Disney, who took Saturday classes here as a child painter Thomas Hart Benton, who taught here from 1935 to 1941, multimedia artist Robert Rauschenberg, who studied fashion design at KCAI sculptor, conceptual artist, and writer Robert Morris celebrated, present-day performance artist, noted fabric sculptor and more recent KCAI graduate, Nick Cave, and the list goes on. Today, KCAI is an impressive reflection of its 130-year history and the community in which it evolved.
KCAI is a four-year college of art and design. In any significant you choose, you will benefit from the immersive, professional studio environment, and learn-by-doing discipline at KCAI to earn your B.F.A.
You will also feed off of the energy of your fellow students while being challenged, encouraged, and directed by your instructors. All of them are accomplished artists, designers, illustrators, photographers, and scholars. Your experience here will begin in the foundation program, where you will be confronted with challenges to your creative thinking and your ability to sense the possible.
As a severe student passionate about your art, please make your future dreams a reality and apply it to KCAI. All applicants must have completed a recognized, secondary school program, or equivalency.
The most important criterion for admission is your potential for success. The admissions committee seeks severe and motivated students willing to take creative risks. The committee understands that each student's level of imagination, innovation, and academic achievement is highly individual. Therefore, each applicant is holistically evaluated with sensitivity and open-mindedness. To start, set up a personal KCAI account. Then you can begin filling out your application and submit it with your application fee.
Kansas City Art Institute is dedicated to helping students realize their educational objectives by providing scholarships, grants, loans, student employment, and other financial aid programs. KCAI helps over 98% of our students find the financial aid they need to pursue their B.F.A. degree. We awarded more than 12.5 million dollars of institutional aid in the 2015-16 academic year.
The learning environment at KCAI is intense, but also fun. Many students love living their passion for art outside the classroom, while also taking time to enjoy new things, new friendships, and new experiences. All are essential parts of the journey, and the memories students will make.
Students will find many opportunities to explore their interests outside the classroom, whether social, cultural, physical, or professional.
One of the things that makes KCAI unique is our campus. The campus community is a tight-knit environment where faculty, staff, and fellow students care deeply about our students' success and strive to participate in and support the Kansas City art community. We also have a beautiful campus nestled in a historic neighborhood surrounded by two of the best art museums in the country, the Nelson-Atkins Museum and the Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art. Students are often seen on the campus green, where they relax, play, and work. Our campus green is often the scene of Frisbee tossing, dog walking, kickball, soccer games, art installations, picnics, cookouts, parades, and study groups.