- published: 07 Aug 2010
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Art Center College of Design (a.k.a. "Art Center") is a private college located in Pasadena, California, and was cited by BusinessWeek as one of the 60 best design schools in the world. The college’s industrial design program is consistently ranked number one by both DesignIntelligence and U.S. News & World Report, and BusinessWeek regularly features Art Center among the world’s top design schools. U.S. News also ranks Art Center’s Art and Media Design programs among the top 20 graduate schools in the U.S. The college logo is an orange circle, also known as the Art Center "Dot," which has been a part of the school's identity since its inception by founder Tink Adams. Art Center offers undergraduate and graduate programs in a variety of art and design fields, as well as public programs for children and high school students, and continuing studies for the Los Angeles metro area. Art Center is particularly known for its Transportation (Automobile) Design, Product Design and Entertainment Design programs. It also has notable Photography, Graphic Design, Advertising, Illustration, Fine Art, Film and Environmental Design programs. Art Center offers graduate degrees in Fine Art, Media Design, Broadcast Cinema and Industrial Design. The college maintains two campuses in Pasadena; both are considered architecturally notable.
An art centre or arts center is distinct from an art gallery or art museum. An arts centre is a functional community centre with a specific remit to encourage arts practice and to provide facilities such as theatre space, gallery space, venues for musical performance, workshop areas, educational facilities, technical equipment, etc.
In the United States, "art centers" are generally either establishments geared toward exposing, generating, and making accessible art making to arts-interested individuals, or buildings that rent primarily to artists, galleries, or companies involved in art making.
In Britain, art centres began after World War II and gradually changed from mainly middle-class places to 1960s and 1970s trendy, alternative centres and eventually in the 1980s to serving the whole community with a programme of enabling access to wheelchair users and disabled individuals and groups.
In the rest of Europe it is common among most art centres that they are partly government funded, since they are considered to have a positive influence on society and economics according to the Rhineland model philosophy. A lot of those organisations originally started in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s as squading spaces and were later on legalized.