About

The NYU High School Summer Art Intensive is a four-week residential studio art program hosted by NYU's Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, running July 6 through August 2, 2026, on NYU's Washington Square Park campus in New York City. It admits 54 students — divided into three intimate cohorts of 18 — making it one of the smaller and more selective visual arts programs in the pre-college landscape. Students in all three cohorts take the same three core studio courses together: digital art, sculpture, and painting, meeting two days per week per course, with four evenings per week of supervised open studio time in the NYU Art Building. The program is non-credit. Total cost of attendance is $7,360, comprising $4,800 in tuition, $1,764 in housing (four weeks at $441 per week), and a $796 meal plan. Financial aid is available; the priority deadline for financial aid applicants and international students was February 15, 2026.

The curriculum is built around serious studio production rather than survey instruction. Students are expected to create ambitious work beyond the scope of high school art classes, working with materials and technologies — including textiles, laser cutting, and digital fabrication — that most high school programs do not offer. The weekly seminar is the program's most distinctive structural feature: rather than classroom-based discussion, students travel to working artists' studios and to New York City's major art institutions, engaging with contemporary artists at every career stage, from emerging voices to internationally established figures. The explicit goal is to understand what it means to be a working artist in New York City from the people doing it. A gallery exhibition at the end of the program — open to friends and family — showcases the work students produce across the four weeks.

Admission is competitive and portfolio-based. Applicants must be current 9th, 10th, or 11th graders and submit an online application along with a portfolio of 10–20 images; work does not need to be finished, and the program explicitly welcomes experimentation. Acceptance notifications begin March 15. International students are welcome and encouraged to apply with proof of English proficiency. Students are required to live on campus in a university residence hall within walking distance of the NYU Art Building.

For a high school student seriously pursuing studio art — particularly one interested in contemporary practice rather than traditional fine arts training — the program offers something genuinely difficult to replicate: a small cohort, working NYU faculty, studio access in one of the world's most active contemporary art cities, and direct, repeated contact with the artists who inhabit that world. The non-credit structure is a deliberate choice, keeping the focus on making work rather than meeting academic requirements. With 54 seats and a portfolio requirement, it functions more like a conservatory admission than a typical pre-college application, and the work students leave with is directly usable in college art program applications.