Flo Allen, “Honey I AM the Art Institute” is one of the many wonderful features in the current exhibition, SFAI 150: A Spirit of Disruption. Allen, a legend in the Bay Area Art world for 7 decades, was an artists’ model in the 1930s at the Golden Gate International Exhibition on Treasure Island. She organized the Models’ Guild, sang in the Studio 13 Jass Band, was a hostess at the legendary Old Spaghetti Factory on Grant Avenue in North Beach and wrote a column, “Flo Sez” f

1972 photo of student Howie Becker by Steve Gach and Poster by Lex Calip, 2017, “Just Ask Howie” This is too good an SFAI Historical Blurb not to send out every April 20th..... After receiving his Phd. in Sociology from the University of Chicago, where he published the first scholarly article on marihuana use rather than marihuana’s abuse titled, “Becoming a Marihuana User,” American Journal of Sociology (November, 1953), Professor Becker studied photography at the San Franc

Granville Redmond with Charlie Chaplin. Douglas Tilden, The Football Players In the late 19th century, three fascinating deaf artists arrived at the School by way of Berkeley’s California School for the Deaf: Theophilus Hope d’Estrella was the University of California’s first deaf student, and later became the first deaf student at the California School of Design (now SFAI). D’Estrella, a painter, was also noted for his photography, having been inspir

From the SFAI Library and Archives, in honor of spring and the aesthetics of 1970s poster design: This poppy poster was sent folded in the mail to college and high school counselors in 1975. The text on the back by Dean of Admissions, Alice Erskine, explains SFAI’s participation in a study with the Institute for Personality Assessment and Research at UC Berkeley which collected a “tremendous amount of information” on the “visual acuity, the verbal intelligence, the imaginativ

Dr. Reidar Wennesland and his monkey, Ernest, who became the first and only monkey to direct the school for one month in May 1955. Dr. Wennesland was the physician of many Beat Era artists, accepting artworks in lieu of payment. A number of SFAI artists ended up in his impressive collection, including Jay DeFeo, Jess, Joan Brown, Leo Valledor, David Park, and Richard Diebenkorn. He eventually gifted the collection to two schools in his home country of Norway, the University o