Otis College of Art & Design U.S.

Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world through their creativity, their skill, and their vision.

Otis College of Art and Design is a non-profit (501(c)3 institution founded in 1918 by General Harrison Gray Otis, the founder and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who bequeathed his home to the city for “the advancement of the arts.” For almost eighty years, Otis remained at this downtown location. In 1997, the College moved to the Elaine and Bram Goldsmith Campus on the West side. From Spanish-Moorish mansion to seven-story cube, Otis has evolved. Designed by architect Eliot Noyes for IBM, the 115,000 square-foot  Ahmanson Hall was renovated in 1997, using the concept of an artist’s loft or a working studio rather than that of a traditional classroom. Ahmanson Hall’s open plan encourages communication among the departments, as well as between students and faculty members.

The 40,000 square foot horizontal Galef Fine Arts Center, designed by Frederick Fisher Architects, opened in 2001. Its complex geometry and corrugated metal forms contrast with the “punchcard” vocabulary of Ahmanson Hall. Together, these buildings comprise the Elaine and Bram Goldsmith Campus. Fashion Design occupies one floor of the California Market Center in downtown L.A.; Graduate Fine Arts studios are in the nearby art community of Culver City, and Graduate Public Practice is at the 18th St Arts Center in Santa Monica.

Otis talents are adept navigators and drivers of the creative economy. Otis talents not only adeptly navigate but also inventively drive this economy. Creativity is serious business.

Now in its fifth edition, the annual Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region has put real numbers to creativity. Since its inception in 2007, it has firmly established that the creative economy is powerful in Southern California as a revenue generator (with more than $200 billion in sales and receipts) and as a major employment force (supporting one in eight jobs in the region).

Alumni entrepreneurs are a diverse group of creative thinkers and makers who meet both the challenges and opportunities of the creative economy in Los Angeles and throughout the nation, and enrich our society with their skill and their vision. Their paths and passions differ, but their comments echo a common point, well articulated by Daniel Phillips (’08 Architecture/Landscape/Interiors) and Kim Karlsrud (’07 Product Design): “No school can completely prepare you for what everyone faces after graduation, but it was at Otis that we learned to combine our creative instincts with the ability to act upon them in strategic ways.”

The creative economy, big business as it is, is only one dimension of the creative capital that Otis and its community deploy to make a difference. There is less tangible but no less important impact in LA than measurable economic results. Measurable economic results are only one aspect of the impact of creative capital. Consider the fact that, every year, Otis’ unique Integrated Learning program places almost 1,000 students and faculty at 35 community sites to create social solutions through art and design. Most significantly, many Otis students are the first in their families to attend college to become high-skilled professionals, and through their socioeconomic transformation, their families also advance.

This March, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation awarded Otis a major gift of $600,000 to support scholarship grants and the Integrated Learning program. This May, the Annual Otis Scholarship Benefit will raise $1 million in scholarship funds. Such generous support acknowledges Otis’ effectiveness in nurturing human capital through art and design education. The return on investment is that Otis alumni are great resources to social, intellectual and economic development. That is creative capital at work.

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