Grand Central School of Art

The Grand Central School of Art was an American art school in New York City, founded in 1922 by the painters Edmund Greacen, Walter Leighton Clark and John Singer Sargent. It closed in 1944.

History
The school was established and run by the Grand Central Art Galleries, an artists' cooperative founded by Sargent, Greacen, Clark, and others in 1922. The school was directed by Greacen, Sargent and Daniel Chester French and occupied 7000 sqft on the seventh floor of the east wing of the Grand Central Terminal in New York City. Press accounts of the school's opening reception mentioned the following instructors: Greacen, George Pearse Ennis, sculptor Chester Beach, muralists Ezra Winter and Dean Cornwell, the illustrator and costume designer Helen Dryden, Nicolai Fechin, Julian Bowes and George Elmer Browne.

The school had more than 400 students its first year and soon grew to 900, making it one of the largest art schools in the city. Greacen engaged Arshile Gorky as an instructor, probably the school's most prominent teacher. Another instructor was Harvey Dunn, whose comments were captured by a student during one five-hour class session and were published in 1934 in a slim volume titled An Evening in the Classroom. For some years the school held a summer session in Eastport, Maine. After nearly 20 years of operation, the school closed in 1944.

The school has no relationship to the current Grand Central Academy of Art, despite the similarities in name and a shared humanist perspective. The academy, also in New York City, was established by the Institute of Classical Architecture and Classical America (ICA&CA), founded as two separate nonprofit organizations in 1991 and 1968.

Notable alumni

 * Charles Addams
 * James E. Allen
 * Revington Arthur
 * Clare Bice
 * Hans Burkhardt
 * Gerald Curtis Delano
 * John Philip Falter
 * Arnold Friberg
 * Mary Goldsmith
 * Walter Tandy Murch
 * Stow Wengenroth
 * Arthur Sarnoff
 * Norman Rockwell
 * Harold Von Schmidt
 * John Clymer
 * Jack Coggins
 * F. Luis Mora
 * Alex Raymond
 * Arthur Roy Mitchell
 * James Gordon Irving
 * Frank J. Reilly
 * Frank DuMond
 * Robert F. Gault AWS
 * Edmund Greacen
 * Pruett Carter
 * Frank Panabaker
 * Ken Riley
 * Saul Tepper
 * Norman Saunders
 * Emmett Watson
 * Bob Kane
 * Stuart Davis
 * Ethel Schwabacher
 * Arshile Gorky
 * Willem de Kooning
 * Roselle Osk
 * Molly Guion
 * John Dehner