School of Visual Arts transfers ownership to nonprofit alumni association
The School of Visual Arts (SVA) in New York will be owned by alumni-affiliated nonprofit following a period of financial difficulties and recent union efforts by its faculty.
On September 1, the Rhodes family has nearly 80 years of history, transferring ownership to the SVA Alumni Association, which has funded student scholarships since 1972. David Rhodes, the school’s long-time principal, promises that “the daily lives of students, administration, faculty and staff will not change.”
“For nearly eighty years, my family proudly helped SVA with countless changes in the higher education landscape of the ever-growing arts community in New York City,” Rhodes said in a statement. “It feels like such a beloved institution being directed by the Alumni Association to the natural next step in its future, an organization that includes leadership that cares about SVA as much as I do.”
SVA opened in 1947 as a school of cartoonists and illustrators, enrolling about 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students. Alumni over the past 75 years include the most important artists today, such as Sol Lewitt, Joseph Kosuth, Joseph Kosuth, Lorna Simpson, Sarah Sze, Elizabeth Peyton, Andrea Fraser, Andrea Fraser, Keith Haring, Kaws, Kaws, Collier Schorr and Tom Burr.
In a statement, Todd Radom, the SVA Alumni Society’s board chairman, said, “My own relationship with SVA spans more than half of its entire history, so the opportunity to help lead the College into this new era is both exciting and deeply meaningful. Our entire Board is bound together by our love for SVA, and we look forward to building upon the Rhodes family’s great legacy as we work with the SVA community to support its mission—to educate future generations of global creative citizens.”
In May, about 1,200 SVA faculty members were after 77% of the unions favoring them. SVA faculty is the name of the Union, which works under the Aegis of United Auto Workers, recently elected a bargaining committee and is currently conducting an initial bargaining investigation in its membership to inform its first contract negotiations.
Send to Artnews Hans Tammen, professor of the MFA Computer Arts Program, wrote on behalf of the SVA Teachers Federation and a teacher in humanities and sciences, that the union voted to allow teachers’ expressions to “allow our leadership in schools to do one thousandth of the reason for our teaching conditions under our teaching conditions. And do the critical work that is part of any decision.”
last month, Highly allergic The report said the SVA quietly fired about 30 workers. The layoffs were later confirmed in a comprehensive email from Rhodes, who viewed “financial challenges” as reasoning for cuts.
Tammen and Rivera-Arias added in their email: “Given that higher education and the arts face attacks nationwide, there are more now than ever before, this is the collective voice of key teachers and the school works with us to assume the rights and protections in the contract.”
