Arts Administration Degree - Arts Administration & Policy Programs at SAIC

Alt text: Arts Admin students sitting in front of Cloud Gate (The Bean)

Arts Administration & Policy Department: Arts Administration Degree Programs

The Arts Administration and Policy department at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is structured around the values of collaboration, creativity, experimentation, inclusion, critical thinking, care, activism, advocacy, and reflection. We believe these values are central to building the future of cultural leadership.

Graduate Programs Priority Application Deadline: December 1

SAIC's Graduate Programs offer a priority deadline and reduced application fee before December 1.

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Undergraduate Early Action & Priority Merit Scholarship Deadline: December 1

Submit your application and portfolio by December 1 to be considered for fall 2025 admission and priority merit scholarship.

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File Your FAFSA

In order to be eligible for need-based aid such as SAIC, state and federal grants, loans and work study you need to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) at fafsa.gov.

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Building Creative Leadership in Arts Administration

Systems. Cultures. Futures. Strategies.

We embrace the interdisciplinary, experimental core of SAIC through integrated curriculum design; merging theory and practice. We are constantly developing new partnerships and ways of working collaboratively across sectors. We combine inventiveness and aspirational values with solid grounding in practical skills.

SAIC is a natural laboratory located in a thriving, progressive arts community made up of students and faculty from an array of creative practices. It is a place where various currents of artistic, design, cultural production, and scholarly practice meet, intertwine, and recombine. At SAIC, disciplines exceed their own limits. It’s where real-life, emergent environments encourage an ever-evolving, adaptive, shared space of dialogue, problem-solving, world building, and narrative change.

Learn more about our acclaimed Arts Administration degree programs:

Preparing for Careers in Arts Administration & Policy

SAIC’s Arts Administration programs prepare students to reimagine and lead arts and cultural organizations. Students master essential skills while building a critical perspective on the issues of contemporary arts administration and arts management. Working closely with artists and cultural organizations, students promote ethical practice and advocate for the centrality of the arts and culture in everyday life. They develop new approaches to thinking experientially, critically, and politically. Through the Arts Administration and Policy programs, students discover how to be responsive, adaptive, and creative problem-solvers.

Students pursuing Arts Administration degrees come from a variety of professional and academic backgrounds including law; philosophy; political science; education; social services; and more. Alumni from the program have gone on to find careers as art administrators, curators, historians, organizers, museum directors, and more.

Gain Real-World Experience

In Management Studio courses, Arts Administration and Policy students have the unique opportunity to collaborate with partners from Chicago’s professional creative sector on real projects. This series of leadership and management courses are designed to provide students with an immersive, studio-like learning experience.

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An arts administrator in a red shirt poses in front of a white background

Hayley Blackstone (MA 2021)

“Management Studio challenged me not only to think through the untold details of a large-scale administrative project in the arts practically, but also to realize a provocative and meaningful concept. As part of the project team for New Monuments for New Cities, my group worked with eight civic partners to execute the design, contracting, marketing concept, and all public programming for the inaugural arts initiative of the High Line Network, an organization linking infrastructure reuse sites across North America."

A portrait of an arts administrator in front of a white background

Carlos Salazar (MA 2019)

“Management Studio I and II created the opportunity for me to work with Chicago Cultural Alliance and their project Inherit Chicago, a city-wide festival of arts, crafts, performance, and food related to the diverse cultural heritage of the city of Chicago. This organization allowed me to get deeply involved in the local cultural ecology and its social impact, while providing a space to test and improve my managing skills and acquiring new ones. As a South American student, Inherit Chicago became a gate for me to better understand the rich cauldron of Chicago's cultural panorama and how it speaks to a larger international community."

An arts administrator in a leopard coat poses in a field

Adia Sykes (MA 2018)

“The Chicago Voices project was my first taste of working collaboratively with a large organization to realize a project that had to weave together history, site specificity, community, curatorial practice, and legibility. To do that in the very first semester was a challenge, of course, but also eye opening about the many facets of arts administration."

Core Commitments

Thinking and working at the systems and policy level to recognize, acknowledge, and reimagine complex power structures towards the courageous and continuous building of an equitable, inclusive cultural ecosystem
Working closely, intentionally, empathetically, and intensively with artists, arts & cultural organizations, and beyond
Actively promoting ethical, environmentally sustainable practice
Advocating for the centrality of the arts and culture to the wellbeing of individuals and communities in everyday life
Developing new individual and collaborative approaches to learning
Thinking experientially, critically, and politically about complex challenges facing the cultural ecosystem
Building collective intelligence within and across cohorts and alumni
Elevating creativity in arts administration by leveraging the potential in ambiguity, reframing constraints as opportunity, and refusing scarcity and zero-sum narratives
Creating a socially just and inclusive impact through work in arts and culture

A group of students standing in front of some archways.

Study Abroad

SAIC encourages students to explore the world around them. Each year during winter and summer terms, faculty-led study trips provide students with unique opportunities to earn credit towards their degree completion while experiencing international travel. Students may also choose to participate in long-term study abroad opportunities through SAIC’s semester away program.

Learn more about Study Abroad at SAIC