Philadelphia’s University of the Arts Closes Unexpectedly

The University of the Arts in Philadelphia will shutter for good June 7 after nearly 150 years in operation. The school, which over the years educated the likes of Alex Da Corte, Louise Fishman, Irving Penn, Stephen Powers, Charles Sheeler, Neil Welliver, and Deborah Willis, struggled financially in the wake of the pandemic, as did other art schools in the US. Too, the University of the Arts in recent years had seen a high rate of turnover in high-level administration in its admissions and advancement offices and in the roles of dean and, perhaps most crucially, president.

The seemingly abrupt decision to close the school was not at first communicated officially by the institution to its 1,149 students and roughly 700 staff and faculty, many of whom learned about the closure from social media or a May 31 article in thePhiladelphia Inquirer. “At 2:47 p.m. on Friday I got an email asking me to apply for graduation, and at 6:03 theInquirerposted the story that my school was closing,” illustration major Natalie DeFruscio told theNew York Times.

The school on May 29 notified the Middle States Commission on Higher Education of its plans to close; two days later, the organization yanked its accreditation. Later that same day, university president Kerry Walk and board chair Judson Aaron released a statement acknowledging the closure and pointing to declines in enrollment and revenue and elevated costs as among the causes. “Unfortunately,” the pair wrote, “we could not overcome the ultimate challenge we faced: with a cash position that has steadily weakened, we could not cover significant, unanticipated expenses. The situation came to light very suddenly. Despite swift action, we were unable to bridge the necessary gaps.”

According to the statement, Drexel University, Moore College of Art and Design, and Temple University, all located in Philadelphia, are among the schools expected to accept students transferring from the defunct University of the Arts.

The school’s demise comes nearly two years after the similarly long-running San Francisco Art Institute revealed that it would close and eighteen months after the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, also in Philadelphia, announced that it would close its college at the end of the 2024–25 academic year.