Chouinard Art Institute

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The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard (1879-1969).

Born in Montevideo, Minnesota, Chouinard studied at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York and in Munich, Germany. Believing an art school was both necessary and important on the West Coast, she devoted herself almost exclusively to her school, setting aside her own painting. In 1935, the State of California recognized her institute as a non-profit educational university.

Among her early students was Anthony Heinsbergen who went on to become a leading muralist.

Nelbert Chouinard's age and health led to Walt and Roy Disney along with Lulu May Von Hagen, then chairman of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, overseeing a 1961 merger of the Chouinard Art Institute with the Music Conservatory to create the California Institute of the Arts.

Asked how to say her name, Chouinard told The Literary Digest: "Properly, oui as the French for 'Yes': almost shwee-nar'; but generally spoken shu-nard', u as in shun." (Charles Earle Funk, What's the Name, Please?, Funk & Wagnalls, 1936.)