HISTORY

The roots of the Janus Collaborative were established in 2004, when its three founders were invited by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America to design and develop an intensive fine arts syllabus that would integrate with the ICA & CA’s architecture program, establishing the Grand Central Academy. The goal was to bring together the strengths of leading artists and teachers for the purpose of education, creating a classically structured academy that combined drawing, painting, sculpture and architecture within a concise and holistic curriculum.

Despite the initial success of the GCA, the Institute proceeded to make plans to integrate a private atelier into their facilities, leading to the dissolution of the collaborative core program. Enrolled students, who had already dedicated two years of full-time study with professional artists with a comprehensive curriculum, were to be integrated into a pre-existing atelier, one that propagated a unilateral pedagogy. In response, the class banded together to seek a new space in New York City to continue and complete their education.

The active ambition displayed by the students led to meetings with the Harlem Studio of Art, a non-profit studio school in East Harlem that had a well-equipped space and a supportive and experienced board. The school was seeking professional instructors to attract strong students and to promulgate its mission to provide advanced classical training in the arts. In a series of ensuing meetings, the board enthusiastically adopted the curriculum and offered to support the collaborative vision, thus the founding of the Janus Collaborative School of Art.

The Janus Collaborative School of Art was named to reflect the very essence of its existence; the collaborative element which the founders sought to uphold, and the Roman deity, Janus, that sees both the past and the future, thus symbolizing 'change and transitions such as the progression of past to future, of one condition to another, of one vision to another, and of youth to maturity.' Thus, an apt name for the school’s goals of bringing together leading artists and teachers to offer a progressive curriculum based on applying the knowledge of the past as a means towards understanding and expressing life as a contemporary artist.