The California College of Arts and Crafts was founded in 1907, and over more than a hundred years it has become a renowned educational institution for visionaries and innovators in art and design. Its faculty and alumni have been on the forefront of seminal art movements, including the ceramics revolution of the 1960s, which established that medium as a fine art, and the photorealist movement of the 1970s. Like these art movements, the school’s name needed to evolve. Contemporary audiences understand crafts to signify handicraft rather than the Arts and Crafts movement or American Craftsman style. We recommended streamlining the name to shed these misleading associations. The new name was introduced in 2003, and the college continues to thrive and blaze trails, with faculty and alumni earning Academy Awards and Emmys, Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, MacArthur Prizes, and more.
