LOS ANGELES, June 12, 2006 Barring a miracle, the Chouinard School of Art, which closed yesterday after spring classes ended, will remain closed, executive director Dave Tourje said.

The three year old school, a reincarnation of a famous long-vanished Los Angeles art college, closed down this week due to a lack of money and student interest. Tourje said it failed to generate the $360,000 a year in tuition and donations needed to meet expenses.

Since its revival in 2003, Chouinard has been offering year-round instruction to 145 enrolled students but has no accreditation or degree program.

The prevailing notion in art education, Tourje said, is that "you go to art school, you get a degree and then you are an artist. We disagree with that completely. We don't have any ideas about degrees making a person an artist."

However, Tourje said that the school needed about 100 more students to break even and it needed a much broader donor base. Chouinard directors wound up floating annual deficits of $180,000 out of their own pockets.

"It was a pretty impossible task," Tourje said. "We knew what we were getting into."

Tourje and other board members plan to keep alive the parent Chouinard Foundation, which could become more active in grant making, although Tourje anticipates difficulties due to the lack of resources that will come hand in hand with the closing of the school.

He added that the foundation will relocate to its previous headquarters, in Eagle Rock, Calif.

Los Angeles Times: Chouinard packing its easels for good