Shanghai Art School

I’ve written before about the old Shanghai Academy of Art. In 1952 the new government got around to rearranging the entire art education system in China. The Shanghai Art Academy was closed with elements of it being incorporated into the new East China Arts Academy in Wuxi. But the decentralization of education as part of the Great Leap Forward, also led to the establishment of many short-lived local art colleges and the Shanghai Art School was founded in March 1959, under the auspices of the Bureau of Light Industry. The academy was initially organized as a technical school at the high school level (zhongzhuan ) and had a three-year curriculum. In 1960, junior college and college programs were added, and the academy was reorganized under the Shanghai Department of Education. During its brief existence, it moved at least four times, occupying the grounds of an old middle school, then an abandoned synagogue, and finally moving into the old campus of St. John’s University, where it shared its facilities with the Shanghai Institute of Social Sciences.

The college was then closed in 1965 as priorities changed again and the Cultural Revolution beckoned during which art education was not high on the priorities list.