Founded
by Artists

Nothing begins entirely new. Every act of learning is shaped by what has come before—by traditions carried forward, questioned, and reimagined. FSFA was founded in awareness of this lineage, and in conversation with the long history of artists and thinkers who have come to Italy to study, to work, and to be changed by place.

Florence has hosted many forms of education: study-abroad programs, faculty-led initiatives, temporary schools nested within larger institutions. These efforts have value. Yet we felt there was room for something else—something slower, more rooted, and more deliberately shaped by those who live the practice of making and thinking every day.

FSFA was founded by artists, in dialogue with scholars of Italian culture, to create a school that is not an extension of another institution, but a place in its own right. A place where studio practice exists alongside the study of language, history, philosophy, and daily life; where art is not separated from culture, and culture is not treated as context alone.

In Florence, learning cannot be abstract. The city insists on attention—to materials worn by time, to language spoken and overheard, to the weight of history and the vitality of the present. At FSFA, the city is not a backdrop but a collaborator. Streets, studios, archives, kitchens, and classrooms all become sites of study.

We believe education is most meaningful when it is sustained, intentional, and deeply situated. FSFA exists to support artists and thinkers who want to engage fully—with making, with ideas, and with Italy as a living culture rather than an image or an experience to be consumed. What we have built stands in conversation with what came before, but it is guided by a simple conviction: that learning rooted in place, practice, and community has the power to endure.