The program is especially well-suited to students preparing for application to advanced degree programs (MFA, MA). It also meets the needs of people who have some prior training but who decided too late in their undergraduate careers that they wanted to concentrate in the visual arts, art history, or art conservation. The one-year Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program.

The one-year Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program was created to meet the need for serious and challenging study in the visual arts, art history, or art conservation for students who have already completed a first degree (BA, BS, BFA or the international equivalent). The Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program in Art, Art History, and Art Conservation has been approved by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD).

Each student in the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program in Art is given individual studio space at SACI's Graduate Center, and his or her work is critiqued regularly in group sessions led by the Graduate Studies Area Head and Assistant Instructor of Graduate Studies. Students in the Post-Baccalaureate Certificate Program in Art Conservation who, under SACI's auspices, successfully complete two semesters in any given area of restoration work at a recognized outside laboratory or with a state-run conservation project receive from SACI a certificate (attestato) of apprenticeship

Palazzo dei Cartelloni, SACI's home, is a 29,000 square foot air-conditioned palazzo, located at Via Sant'Antonino 11. It has a beautiful gallery/exhibition space, classrooms, a library, offices, an art conservation laboratory, media facilities and studios surrounding a large, traditional Italian garden. Like all SACI facilities, Palazzo dei Cartelloni meets the health and safety requirements outlined by Italian law no. 626/94, and whenever possible, tries to follow environmentally safe policies. The spacious and light-filled interiors, have been restored to their original Baroque magnificence, with painted ceilings, frescoed walls and marble floors. This location places SACI students in the vicinity of the Duomo, the churches of San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Novella, and is just steps away from the central market and the new Alinari photography museum.

The Palazzo was remodeled as a residence in the 17th century for the mathematician Vincenzo Viviani, who had been a pupil of the astronomer and scientist Galileo Galilei. Viviani dedicated his home to his esteemed teacher and placed two large scrolls on the building's façade that describe the extraordinary work and achievements of his master. One notices the Palazzo immediately by the bust of Galileo that crowns the palatial entranceway. Viviani created this monument to Galileo in defiance of the papal ban that forbade honoring the work of Galileo partly because of Galileo's assertion that, "The truth of nature is more important than traditional dogma." SACI's home is, therefore, a unique monument to a man who is considered "one of the two greatest sons of Florence" (along with Michelangelo Buonarroti), an accolade inscribed on the buildings scrolls.

Excerpted from The New York Times Magazine
The Sophisticated Traveler.
By DAVA SOBEL, "Galileo's Universe"

"Galileo lived in many parts of Florence and also died there, so that his elaborate grave in the Church of Santa Croce is a regular tourist attraction. In the nearly 100 years that passed from Galileo's death in 1642 to the completion of his mausoleum in 1737, one of his followers despaired of ever seeing the master properly entombed, and he therefore incorporated a lavish funerary tribute into the façade of his own new home. The former residence of Vincenzio Viviani, at No. 11, Via Sant'Antonino, is a short walk from Florence's central railway station. One recognizes the house immediately by the bust of Galileo over the arched front doorway, or by the enormous stone scrolls flanking the door, describing Galileo's major achievements in Latin inscriptions and bas-relief."