NCAA Early History

It was the Fourth of July 1972 on the campus of the University of Kansas, when the idea for the formation of a

national organization for academic art administrators came to light. My family and I were traveling from our home

in Flagstaff, Arizona, where I served as Chairman of the Art Department at Northern Arizona University, to the east

coast. We had stopped to visit the Art Department at KU and had decided to stay for what proved to be an

impressive display of fireworks that evening. While we waited for darkness, my wife Nanci, a public school art

teacher, and I began to reminisce about annual meetings of college and university art department heads which I had

organized in Wisconsin several years before. One thing led to another and we were soon talking about the need for

a national forum of the same type. By the time we reached the east coast, we had a small notebook full of ideas and

questions to be considered. What would eventually become the National Council of Art Administrators was an idea

whose time had come!
 

We drove several hundred miles off our planned route to meet with Dr. August Freundlich, then Dean of Fine and

Performing Arts at Syracuse University, my former major professor and trusted mentor. He confirmed the need, and

gave his sagely approval to my proposal. It was at the Freundlich’s summer cottage, “Duck Soup”, on the shores of

Lake Erie, that we, Gus and I, formulated a plan to call together a small group of art administrators, from around the

country, to discuss the feasibility of forming an organization. The following individuals were contacted: Donald

Irving, Dean of the School of the Chicago Art Department; Donald Staff, Dean of Fine Arts at the University of

South Florida; Richard Scherpereel, Chairman of the Department of Art at Texas A&I University; and James Roy,

Chairman of the Art Department at Saint Cloud State University in Minnesota. All accepted the invitation and it

was decided that the first organizational meeting was to be held at the Chicago Art Institute, March 5-6, 1973. The

above named individuals, along with Dr. Freundlich and myself, become the first Board of Directors of the National

Council of Art Administrators. I was elected Chair of the Board and Dick Scherpereel, Secretary/Treasurer. Fred

Mills, then Chair of the Art Department at Illinois State, who was visiting Don Irving at the Chicago Art Institute at

the time, sat in our meeting and became, along with the founding board members, an instrumental figure in the early

development of our organization. John Wallace, Chair of Art at Prairie State College in Chicago Heights also met

with the board.
 

Funding came in the form of one hundred, 1972 dollars from my personal checking account and a lot of help from

the Art Department at Northern Arizona and Texas A&M Universities. Nanci and I typed over five hundred

personal letters to Art Department Heads and Deans around the country inviting them to attend the inaugural

meeting at the Midland Hotel in Chicago. Remember there were no computers in those days! Don Irving was to be

our host and local coordinator. It was he who selected the Midland Hotel…a fact that many of us never let him

forget! To our pleasure exactly one hundred (out of 204 charter members) attended that first conference…all but

one were male, the lone woman: a Catholic Nun. The theme of the first conference was, “The Unique Problems of

An Art Administrator.” Ken Prescott, then with the Ford Foundation, was the keynote speaker. Annual

memberships dues were $10.
 

The 1974 conference was held at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Our two main speakers were painter

Philip Pearlstein and art critic, Jack Burnham. Paid memberships dropped considerably, but conference attendance

held at approximately 100.
 

Peter A. Jacobs

Founder and First Chair – NCAA

Department of Art

Colorado State University

Fort Collins, CO 80523

2/13/94