Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, often referred to simply as LaGuardia, is a public high school specializing in teaching visual arts and performing arts, located near Lincoln Center in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of the Upper West Side in Manhattan, New York City. Located at 100 Amsterdam Avenue between West 64th and 65th Streets, the school is operated by the New York City Department of Education, and resulted from the merger of the High School of Music & Art and the School of Performing Arts. The school has a dual mission of arts and academics, preparing students for a career in the arts or conservatory study as well as a pursuit of higher education.
The school is the only one of New York City's nine specialized high schools to receive special funding from the New York State Legislature through the Hecht-Calandra Act, as well as the only specialized high school that does not use the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test (SHSAT) as admissions criteria.
The school in 2019–2020 had 3,011 students and 164 staff members, with a teacher–student ratio of 1:20.
History
The High School of Music & Art was founded by Mayor Fiorello H. LaGuardia in 1936. He wanted to establish a public school in which students could hone their talents in music, art and the performing arts. In 1948, a similar institution – the High School of Performing Arts – was created in an effort to harness students' talents in dance. The schools merged on paper in 1961 and were to be combined in one building. However, this took many years.
In 1984, the schools moved to a new concrete building, designed by Argentine architect Eduardo Catalano and adjacent to Lincoln Center. The Board of education honored Mayor LaGuardia posthumously by naming the new building after him. Prior to the building's completion in 1985, Music & Art – colloquially known as "The Castle on the Hill" – was located in Manhattan at Convent Avenue and 135th Street in what has since become part of City College of New York's South Campus; the building is home to A. Philip Randolph Campus High School. Performing Arts was located in Midtown Manhattan on West 46th Street. Mayor La Guardia regarded Music & Art as the "most hopeful accomplishment" of his long administration as mayor.
Alumni from LaGuardia and its two legacy schools, High School of Music and Art and School of Performing Arts, are active in supporting the students and the school through scholarships and support for special programs, school events, and reunions held at the school and throughout the world. The school's alumni organization has a full-time executive director and offices at the school. It functions as an independent charitable organization organized under the laws of New York. The prestigious Fame School has built up a reputation as the #1 ranked performing arts high school in NYC.
Academic curriculum
Students at LaGuardia take a full academic course load while participating in conservatory-style arts concentration. Each student majors in one studio, choosing from either Dance, Drama, Art, Vocal Music, Instrumental Music, or Technical Theater.
Students can take honors classes by choice or programming. LaGuardia also offers several Advanced Placement courses.
Studio curriculum
The school presents an annual musical. The Musical Theater class, an elective school-wide course, is offered through the collaboration of faculty members from Music, Drama, Dance, and the Tech Theater Studios, culminating in a major musical theater performance. Recent productions have included Gypsy, Les Misérables, West Side Story, Hair, Ragtime, Hairspray, Guys and Dolls, Sweet Charity, Grease, In the Heights, Beauty and the Beast, The Sound of Music, and Cinderella.
Art
For the first two years of education, the art department stresses traditional artistic skills and discipline. Students work on drawing from observation, learning color theory, and the principles of design. Following this, students elect vocationally oriented courses in the fine arts such as Digital Media, Architecture, Painting, Sculpture, and Photography. In their senior year, art majors can submit portfolios to the department for consideration for a place in the senior galleries, which are a series of shows organized and constructed by the chosen students and a student curator.