Facilities & Resources | School of the Art Institute of Chicago

A display from The Sweetest 16, an exhibition at the John M. Flaxman Library celebrating Xerox Candy Bar's sixteenth anniversary.

Master of Fine Arts in Studio, Comics Facilities & Resources

The School of the Art Institute of Chicago offers the following facilities and resources to students in the School's MFA in Studio, Comics program:

Large, well-lit and well-ventilated classrooms with natural and color-correcting lighting
Comics classroom equipped with drafting tables and digital scanner
Three critique spaces equipped with digital projectors
Storage rack space
Two well-ventilated spray booths (one in the 280 Building and one in MacLean)
Six display cases for exhibiting artwork
Shared studio spaces and a large critique space
Weekly free figure model sessions
Materials and Techniques StudioLab
Printmaking facility covering more than 11,000 square feet
Six Intaglio/Relief presses
Fifteen screen printing stations with two large format vacuum tables
Four lithography impression presses
Offset studio with two Heidelberg offset presses, two risograph printers, and finishing equipment
Darkrooms for screenprinting, lithography, and intaglio
Artists’ books/bookbinding studio
Fully equipped Macintosh computer lab with workstations, scanners, and large/medium format printers
Access to laser cutters, 3D printers and scanners, CNC routers and other advanced digital and analog technologies

Additionally, all students have access to the following world-class facilities and academic resources:

Access to the Art Institute of Chicago, a world-renowned, encyclopedic art museum that encompasses more than 5,000 years of creative expression from cultures around the world
Access to wood shop, metal shop, laser cutters, video and audio editing equipment, professional grade digital cameras, and light kits
Affordable digital printing
24-hour individual graduate studios with office or studio workstations
Networked computer software template
Large screen monitors
Resource room (design journals, media, and publications)
SAIC Service Bureau (binding, papers, and large format printing)
Fully equipped letterpress and type shop
The Flaxman Library
Access to highly regarded collections of prints and multiples in the Joan Flasch Artists’ Book Collection at SAIC and the Glore Print and Drawing Study Room at the Art Institute of Chicago
Ryerson and Burnham Libraries
Department of Prints and Drawings Study Room
The Video Data Bank
Gallery Spaces: SAIC Galleries, the student-run SITE galleries, Siragusa Gallery, and various other non-traditional exhibition opportunities across campus including the Incubate program
Roger Brown Study Collection
Gene Siskel Film Center
Fashion Resource Center
The Writing Center
Fnewsmagazine, SAIC’s student-produced newspaper
Mouth, the annual BFAW student-run literary journal