Art colleges end talks on merger

After three months of talks, leaders of two Bay Area art colleges have decided against a merger that would have created the third largest independent visual arts school in the United States.

Last November, the San Francisco Art Institute and the California College of Arts and Crafts began discussions aimed at creating a single institution that would have had about 2,100 undergraduate and graduate students, exceeded only by New York City’s Pratt Institute and Parsons School of Design.

But trustees of the two schools ended the merger talks last week. “There wasn’t any single issue. It was a culmination of a whole host of different issues,” ranging from finances and administrative policies to separate educational philosophies and institutional cultures, said Ed Patuto, spokesman for the art institute.

The institute, founded in 1871, has 650 students; the college, founded in 1907, has 1,400.

Mike Boehm