On March 25, the community of the School of the Art Institute of Chicago received an email from President Jiseon Lee Isbara with the subject, “A Snapshot of School Progress” and signed by Isbara, Provost Martin Berger, and Dean of Students Rob Flot. The email arrived after a challenging year. It is, I believe, the President’s sincere attempt to quell worries about the integrity of the school.
The email concerns SAIC’s budget and plans for the future. In the first part of the email, “A Sound Financial Outlook,” Lee Isbara explains that the budget is, at last, balanced. Lee Isbara also writes that fundraising goals have been exceeded by an impressive 26% so far this year. (For a recap of the budget challenges of this school year, see F Newsmagazine Managing Editor Sidne K. Gard’s coverage in the March issue.) Before covering other news, Lee Isbara ended her report on the budget by writing, “We remain confident in the underlying financial health of the school.”
SAIC’s financial status is, both directly and indirectly, a central issue for students. The school’s programs have been diluted this year to reach fiscal equilibrium, and that’s been devastating for many of us. The Video Data Bank staff is gutted. We at F Newsmagazine have lost an invaluable supporter, teacher, and educator in the elimination of the design adviser position.
Faculty and staff we cared about were treated like criminals when they were dismissed, led off campus by guards, and found their email addresses deactivated without notice. Important vacant roles were quietly erased. Beloved classes vanished. And, let’s say it all together; STUDIO ACCESS. It is simply embarrassing that SAIC charged MFA students an average tuition of $61,980 in 2026 and can’t find the pittance that would restore 24-hour studio access (the norm in the top 10 MFA programs). Maybe we are gearing up for a drop in standings, a slide into mediocrity.
No? Then one would think we’d be fighting harder for our reputation.
Students have had a difficult year. I don’t believe that President Lee Isbara’s email reflects an understanding of that. Everything is not great. We lost an amazing student and artist last summer with the death of Sol Lee; and we lost a man who poured a half century of his life into this place when professor Frank Piatek died in January. Neither have received an on-campus memorial service or any other kind of physical remembrance at SAIC.
Many students have been directly impacted by national and international developments, including this country’s regressive immigration policies, war, and genocide. This has not been an “everything is fine” school year.
Loss illuminates. It feels like our school is at sea, and I wonder if our inability to mourn the family we have lost (a collective unwillingness to live in our vulnerability) and the “everything is fine” propaganda might be connected.
It is nice to have a balanced budget because that means you don’t owe any money, and, often, owing money causes compromises. On the other hand, to declare that the financial ship is sound and that much more money was raised this year than expected, when programs have been gutted, suggests that none of them are particularly important to the school’s administrative leadership.
What I’m talking about is perception. Let’s be very clear, I believe that Lee Isbara is concerned about the school and doing everything she can. I believe that there are other administrators that are interested, concerned, and working hard. But we want our programs fully funded. We want our friends and beloved teachers honored when they pass. We want to make art when we are moved to make art, without arbitrary limitations based on penny-pinching administrators. We invest in art school to be surrounded by a pro-artist culture. And this is, frankly, lacking at SAIC.
Part of the problem is that these well-intentioned people are a very narrow decision-making group who all come from similar backgrounds. It is very hard to see innovation or outside points of view as having much weight when nobody in the room has a different set of experiences to bring to the conversation.
The world is burning, and the people in control and their servants are working overtime to ensure it burns all the way down. Only art will save it. We who live to make that art are not frivolous people. We are the only ones who can save this insane culture from itself, if it can be saved.
Our schools should respect us in the same way the teaching institutions of physicists and mathematicians respect them. To achieve that, we must demand respect. There is no other way forward.
