page_title: Academy of San Carlos
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Academy of San Carlos / History
caption_attribution_description: Español: Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes, 1867. Antigua Academia de San Carlos.
context_page_description: The Academy of San Carlos is located at 22 Academia Street in just northeast of the main plaza of Mexico City. It was the first major art academy and the first art museum in the Americas. It was founded in 1781 as the School of Engraving and moved to the Academia Street location about 10 years later. It emphasized classical European training until the early 20th century, when it shifted to a more modern perspective. At this time, it also integrated with the National Autonomous University of Mexico, eventually becoming the Faculty of Arts and Design, which is based in Xochimilco. Currently, only graduate courses of the modern school are given in the original academy building.
context_section_description: The Academy of San Carlos was founded in 1783, being the first arts academy established in America in 1783, with European teachers, and bright students. In 1540 the building was built in order to create the first hospital for people with syphilis. Its name was "Hospital del Amor de Dios", and was closed in 1783 in order to fuse itself with the hospital of San Andrés in the old college of Jesuits on Tacuba street.
  Jerónimo Antonio Gil, a famous engraver, established in 1778 an engraving school by the order of King Carlos VI. It was so successful that with his partner, Fernando José Mangino, decided to create a new academy that teaches painting, sculpture and architecture. Finally, in 1781 classes started on the Real Casa de Moneda thanks to the donations of rich people, churches, the Tribunal of Trade and the states of Veracruz, Queretaro, Guanajuato, Cordoba and Orizaba.
  The school's first director, Italian Jeronimo Antonio Gil, was appointed by Carlos III and gathered prominent artists of the day including José de Alcíbar, Santiago Sandoval, Juan Sáenz, Manuel Tolsá and Rafael Ximeno y Planes. Tolsá and Ximeno would later stay on to become directors of the school. The new school began to promote Neoclassicism, focusing on Greek and Roman art and architecture, advocating European-style training of its artists. To this end, plaster casts of classic Greek and Roman statues were brought to Mexico from Europe for students to study.
  The Royal Card of establishment was issued on December 25 of 1783. It was asked by the viceroy Martín de Mayorga to the King Carlos III. They choose San Carlos as patron saint.
  On November 4 of 1785, courses were officially started in the Academy of the Noble Arts of San Carlos of the New Spain. In 1788, the Academy of San Fernando in Spain sent some teachers like the famous Manuel Tolsá who was in charge of architecture and sculpture.
  Aspirations of growing up were so big, that they even tried to afford the building that Tolsá was designing on Nilpantongo Street, but it was way too expensive and it was paid by the Royal Seminar of Mining.
  Without a building of their own, the Academy asked for the forsaken one of the Hospital Amor de Dios and finally in 1787 they started classes there. 
  Since its founding, it attracted the country's best artists, and was a force behind the abandonment of the Baroque style in Mexico, which had already gone out-of-fashion in Europe.
  In the early 19th century, the academy was closed for a short time due to the Mexican War of Independence. When it reopened, it was renamed the National Academy of San Carlos and enjoyed the new government's preference for Neoclassicism, as it considered the Baroque reminiscent of colonialism. Despite the school's association with the independent Mexican government, Emperor Maximilian I (installed in Mexico by the French) protected the school during his reign, although foreign artists were shunned there. When Benito Juárez ousted the emperor and regained the presidency of Mexico, he was reluctant to support the school and its European influence, which he considered to be a vestige of colonialism.
  The academy continued to advocate classic, European-style training of its artists until 1913. In that year, a student and teacher strike advocating a more modern approach ousted director Antonio Rivas Mercado. It was also partially integrated into University of Mexico (now UNAM) at that time, although it initially kept a large degree of autonomy. In 1929, the architecture program was separated from the rest of the academy, and in 1953, this department was moved to the newly built campus of UNAM in the south of the city. The remaining programs in painting, sculpture and engraving were renamed National School of Expressive Arts Escuela Nacional de Artes Plásticas. Later, the undergraduate fine arts programs were moved to a facility in Xochimilco, leaving only some graduate programs in the original Academy of San Carlos building.
caption: Old photo of the dean's office
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