Leonardo and San Francisco Art Institute Announce Partnership

November 18, 2004 (San Francisco) - The San Francisco Art Institute (SFAI), one of the foremost art colleges in the nation, and the International Society for the Arts, Sciences, and Technology (Leonardo/ISAST) announced today a partnership that will bring the editorial offices of Leonardo, the Society's publishing arm, onto the main campus of the Art Institute in May, 2005. The announcement was made by SFAI President Chris Bratton and Leonardo/ISAST Board Chair Roger Malina.

"The presence of Leonardo on campus will expand opportunities for SFAI students to further explore the intersections of new media, art, science, criticism, and publishing," said Chris Bratton. "For over thirty years their publication Leonardo has been the journal of record for cutting edge artistic investigations of science and technology," Bratton continued. "Bringing them into the SFAI community will be a tremendous advantage for students and for our new interdisciplinary Centers for Art + Science, Media Culture, Public Practice, and Word, Text, and Image."

The partnership underscores a period of great investment in academic programs at the Art Institute. The school introduced four new Centers for Interdisciplinary Learning to its undergraduate curriculum this fall and also opened a new facility for artistic investigation in high definition technology, the Ars Nova XXI HD Research Laboratory. Other SFAI partnerships created through the new Centers include NASA, the Exploratorium, Bay Area Video Coalition, San Francisco Center for the Book, and Arion Press.

The journal Leonardo was established by space pioneer and kinetic artist Frank Malina in 1967, around the same time his friend, physicist Frank Oppenheimer, founded San Francisco's hands-on museum of science, art, and human perception, the Exploratorium. Today Leonardo/ISAST is a professional organization that promotes scholarship and documentation on the work of artists involved with the sciences and new technologies and stimulates collaboration between artists, scientists, and engineers. Its activities include the awarding of prizes, organizing workshops, and three academic journals published by MIT Press: Leonardo, Leonardo Music Journal, and Leonardo Electronic Almanac. The Leonardo Book Series, with twenty titles to date, is a key resource in the field. Leonardo/ISAST works in partnership with a sister society, Leonardo/OLATS, in Paris, France. Leonardo/ISAST's website is www.leonardo.info.

"As Leonardo grows," said Roger Malina, Chair of the Leonardo Board, "one of our primary goals is to reach out to the new generation of artists who are developing in so many different ways the interdisciplinary forms envisioned by Leonardo's founders, and also to promote scholarship by historians and theoreticians of this growing area of art practice. This partnership will allow us to continue working with all our university partners while giving us direct access to a young and vibrant artistic community."

The partnership between Leonardo and SFAI includes internships for Art Institute students, collaborations on lecture series and symposia, and other joint endeavors to be announced in coming months. According to SFAI Center for Art+Science co-coordinator Meredith Tromble, there will also be other, less quantifiable benefits from the partnership. "Our campus provides a system for people, students, faculty, and the public to meet, take part in conversations, and exchange creative ideas on a daily basis. The Center for Art + Science is very excited about bringing the Leonardo community into this mix."

SFAI is committed to arts education in a cross-disciplinary environment, not only between art-making media, but also between the arts and other disciplines. As described by New York Times critic Michael Kimmelman, the college has served as "an academic oasis and think tank for artists toiling at the intersection of moving images, sculpture, and Conceptualism." The partnership with Leonardo will help provide an active framework from which students can explore new ways of looking at, thinking about, and making art, while learning about science, technology, writing, and history.