School of Visual Arts (New York)

The School of Visual Arts (SVA) is an art and design college located in Manhattan, New York, founded in 1947 by Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School. It was renamed SVA in 1956 and began offering degrees in 1972. As of September 2025, ownership transitioned from the Rhodes family to the SVA Alumni Society as part of a planned conversion to nonprofit status.

SVA offers 11 undergraduate and 22 graduate degree programs across BFA, MFA, MA, and MPS credentials, with a total undergraduate enrollment of approximately 3,255 students (fall 2024) and a faculty of more than 1,100. Its student-faculty ratio is 9:1. The school is accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education and is a member of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design.

The school has graduated more than 44,000 creative professionals, including Academy, Emmy, and Grammy award-winners, MacArthur Fellows, and Guggenheim Fellows, whose work appears in collections at MoMA and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. SVA is also notable for its long-running NYC subway advertising campaigns featuring original artworks by prominent designers such as Milton Glaser and Paula Scher, resulting in a collection of over 200 posters exhibited in more than 10 countries.

As an institution at the intersection of professional creative practice and arts education, SVA is directly relevant to innovations in design tools, creative workflows, art education technology, and the development of emerging visual artists and designers.