Nelbert Chouinard

Nelbert Chouinard (born Nelbertina Murphy; 1879–1969) was an American artist who founded the Chouinard Arts Institute (1921) in Los Angeles, California. The Institute had a great influence on artists and art education, creating progressive educational pathways that helped incubate artists who, in turn, defined many directions in the arts -- from visual art and design, to fashion and costume design, animation and motion pictures. Her partnership with Walt and Roy Disney created the foundation for what is today the California Institute of the Arts. Education Nelbert Murphy began her art education at Windom Institute in her hometown of Montevideo, Minnesota. She was a 1904 graduate in fine art, from the Pratt Institute in New York. Career Teaching After graduating from Pratt, she began her teaching career in the Orange, NJ public school system. She spent her summers at home in Minnesota working with the Handicraft Guild in Minneapolis where she taught leather craft art under the guidance of Earnest Batchelder. When her parents relocated from Minnesota to South Pasadena, California in 1909, Nelbert Murphy joined them and taught at Throop Polytechnic, now Caltech, with Ernest Batchelder. Her progressive art pedagogy, influenced by John Dewey's philosophy, was honed further in teaching posts starting in 1916 in El Paso, TX and in 1917 in Washington D.C. In 1918 the now Nelbert Chouinard moved back to South Pasadena and was recruited to become a founding faculty member of the art institute being formed by Harrison Gray Otis and the Los Angeles Museum of History, Science, and Art. Upon opening, the school was called the Otis Art Institute.