Tour Paris’s venerable École des Beaux-Arts with Lee F. Mindel

What do Carlo Bugatti, Mary Cassatt, Tony Garnier, Charles-Louis Girault, Hubert de Givenchy, Richard Morris Hunt, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Bernard Maybeck, Gustave Moreau, Julia Morgan, John Russell Pope, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Georges Seurat, Alfred Sisley, and Marion Sims Wyeth have in common? They were all trained at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts, located at 14 rue Bonaparte on Paris’s Left Bank.

When I’m in Paris, I always make a point of visiting the 350-year-old institution, which has undergone many sensitive and elegant restorations over the years. Comprising a mini-campus of courtyards, studios, salons, a chapel, and a theater, the physical structure complements a curriculum based on the study of classical forms and antiquities.

The school's goal has always been to expose its students to the best of classical design, specializing in drawing, engraving, painting, and other art forms (the architecture division split from the school in 1968). Beaux-Arts was one of the first schools to admit women; famed California architect Julia Morgan (designer of San Simeon and Asilomar) enrolled in 1898. In 1945 noted modernist architect Auguste Perret designed new studio spaces to meet the needs of the growing institution.

The influence of the École des Beaux-Arts extends across the globe. Here in the U.S., its graduates created many of our architectural icons, including the Boston Public Library, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, New York’s Grand Central Station, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to name a few.

Join me for a trip back to school.