Profile: Otis College-Community Profile

Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world through their creativity, their skill, and their vision. The College offers an interdisciplinary education for 1,200 full-time students, awarding accredited BFA degrees in advertising, architecture/landscape/interiors, digital media, fashion design, graphic design, illustration, interactive product design, painting, photography, sculpture/new genres, and toy design; and MFA degrees in fine arts, graphic design, public practice, and writing. Continuing Education offers certificate programs as well as personal and professional development courses.

For nine decades, Otis alumni have demonstrated their ability to successfully compete in a global environment increasingly built on innovation and creative thinking.  Since its establishment in 1918 as Los Angeles’ first independent professional school of art and design, Otis has trained generations of artists who have been in the vanguard of the cultural and entrepreneurial life of the city. Nurtured by Los Angeles’ forward-thinking spirit, the College has produced artists who explore the landscape of popular culture and the significant impact of identity, politics and social policy at the intersection of art and society.

mission:Otis prepares diverse students of art and design to enrich our world through their creativity, their skill, and their vision.

In 1918, General Harrison Gray Otis, the founder and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, bequeathed his home to the city for "the advancement of the arts." For almost eighty years, Otis remained at this Wilshire Boulevard location. In 1997, the College moved to its current west side campus. From Spanish-Moorish mansion to seven-story cube, Otis continues to evolve. Designed by architect Eliot Noyes for IBM, the 115,000 square-foot Ahmanson Hall building was renovated by Bobrow Thomas, using the concept of an artist's loft, or a working studio, rather than that of a traditional classroom.

Ahmanson Hall's open plan encourages communication among the departments, as well as between students and faculty.  The 40,000 square foot horizontal Galef Fine Arts Center, designed by Frederick Fisher Architects, opened in 2001. Its complex geometry and corrugated metal forms contrast with the "punchcard" vocabulary of Ahmanson Hall. Together, these buildings comprise the Elaine and Bram Goldsmith Campus.