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The California Institute of the Arts is a private university located in the Valencia neighborhood of the municipality of Santa Clarita in the California county of Los Angeles. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the performing arts. It is authorized by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) to grant Bachelor of Fine Arts and Master of Fine Arts in the visual, performing, and, since 1994, literary arts. The Herb Alpert School of Music at CalArts was accredited in 2009 to grant a Doctor of Musical Arts.
The school was first envisioned by many benefactors in the early 1960s, staffed by a diverse array of professionals (including Nelbert Murphy Chouinard, a founder of Chouinard Art Institute, Walt Disney, Lulu Von Hagen, Thornton Ladd and others). The institute was started as an interdisciplinary "Caltech of the arts", with all schools under one roof. CalArts provides a collaborative environment for a diversity of artists. Students are free to develop their own work (over which they retain control and copyright) in a workshop atmosphere.