Cleveland Institute of Art continues to build on an internationally recognized heritage of excellence and innovation that dates back to 1882. That year, the school was chartered as the Western Reserve School of Design for Women. The school’s original name reflects the forward-thinking views of founder Sarah Kimball, who opened her home for the first-class meetings, attended by just one teacher and one student. Five years after its opening, there was already a young man attending. By 1891, the co- educational school was renamed the Cleveland School of Art and blossomed under the influence of a dedicated and talented faculty, whose prize-winning art and award-winning commercial designs are known collectively, even today, as the “Cleveland School.”
Over time, the school’s success prompted changes in facilities— from Mrs. Kimball’s sitting room to the attic of the Cleveland City Hall Annex, to the Horace Kelley mansion on present-day East 55th Street. In 1905, the Cleveland School of Art built a brick Italianate building in University Circle (razed as part of a 1960s site redevelopment), which boasted a grand exhibition gallery predating the Cleveland Museum of Art by a decade.
In 1946, Ohio authorized the college to confer the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. In 1948 the college became officially known as the Cleveland Institute of Art, and in 1956, classes moved into a new building on East Boulevard named for George Gund, who served as CIA Board President for 24 years.
The college purchased a former Ford Model T automobile assembly plant in 1981 and renovated it for classroom and studio space. The building, which had been added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1976, was named the Joseph McCullough Center for the Visual Arts (JMC) after CIA’s former president of 33 years. The JMC went through another renovation in 2010, and in late 2014, the college finished construction of a new George Gund Building, adjoined to the JMC, and a block away from CIA’s new Uptown Residence Hall.
CIA launched its newest facility and “enterprise campus”, the Interactive Media Lab (IML), as part of the MidTown Collaboration Center in Fall 2025. All majors have access to this unique cross-sector innovation hub at the intersection of art, design, technology, workforce development, and community during their time at CIA.