The hub for france-american exchange

By 1927, this full-time art and design program had grown to 217 students with17 nationalities represented, including Austrians, Swedes, Swiss, Russians and Australians. By establishing The Paris Ateliers as a branch of the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, Parsons encouraged the exchange of ideas and trends between New York and Paris at a time when communication between the two continents was much more limited then today.

“A towering figure in the world of design education, Frank Alvah Parsons encouraged the rise of the design profession in America, trained many of the leading commercial artists of his day, and created and disseminated influential theories of design. Because of his importance, the school he directed, then known as the New York School of Fine and Applied Art, was posthumously renamed for him. The prestige of Parsons The New School of Design owes much to Frank Alvah Parsons and the ways he developed the school's curriculum.”

In the 1904 Parsons begin teaching at the New York School of Art and from September 1907 through December 1910 co-managed the school. Parsons established the first professional programs offered in America in costume design, interior decoration, and graphic design (then known as commercial illustration). In 1909, so as to reflect the multi-disciplinary curriculum, Parsons reincorporated the school as the New York School of Fine and Applied Art.

After becoming the school’s director in 1911, Parsons continued to expand the scope of the school, establishing a program in photography in 1916 and later by opening The Paris Ateliers.
The Paris Ateliers catalog of 1926-27 beautifully expresses Frank Alvah Parsons philosophy and mission for the school:
The basis of the school…was the recognition that art is a universal quality belonging to no particular time, location, class, field or technique; that it is essential to the happiness and success of nation or an individual, both spiritually and materially; that like other universal things it is based on principle and plan, in matters of function and of taste. It also acknowledged the truth that art should be expressed in intimate necessities as well as in luxuries. Hence the unceasing policy of the school to arouse interest, stimulate desire and start action for better taste in the house, in clothes and in the various graphic methods of modern American salesmanship called advertising.

The extraordinary change wrought in public taste, the growing belief in a more scholarly research for ideas, instead of the adulation of “originality” with out ideas (particularly for the house and the stage) led to the founding 1921 of the Paris brand of the school at 9 place de Vosges….

Frank Alvah Parsons was well recognized in France and the US as a leader in design education and international partnership. Parsons represented the United States as a Delegate at Large at the Paris Exposition of Decorative Art in 1925 and then in 1927, the French government acknowledged his work in advancing Franco-American relations, by making him a Chevalier de la Légion d’Honneur.
The Patrons and Patronesses of The Paris Ateliers were drawn from the elite society of Paris and in the art and design fields of the day, including then Ambassador of the United States in Paris, Jesse Strauss, the Directeur Général des Beaux-Arts, Geroges Huisman, Mme. La Duchesse de la Rouchefoucauld Doudeauville, Mme. La Marquise de Dampierre, Mme. La Comtesse de Fels, Mme. La Marquise de Ganay, Princesse Edmond de Polignac, Mrs. Robert Woods Bliss, Edith Wharton, as well as the Conservateurs of the Musée des Arts Decoratifs, Palais de Versailles et des Trianons, Palais de Fontainbleau and the Musée du Louvre to name a few.

Many designers of great renown were educated at the Paris Ateliers including Claire McCardell, the pioneer of ready-to-wear clothing in America and Gilbert Adrian, the creator of the costumes for The Wizard of Oz. The Parsons table, minimal and, for its time, revolutionary, was designed by Jean-Michel Frank in collaboration with students from The Paris Ateliers. Sadly, due the outbreak of World War II, the Paris Atelier closed its doors in 1939.

Parsons Paris School of Art + Design
The school was first reopened as a summer program in the late 1970s. In 1981, Frank Alvah Parsons’ great vision of internationalizing art education was revived by David Levy, then Dean of Parsons School of Design, when he established Parsons Paris as a branch campus of the school.