California Institute of the Arts Art school which was founded in 1962 combining the Chouinard Art Institute and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music. Walt Disney had been a longtime supporter of Chouinard, because many of his artists had received training there, so he was an avid advocate for the new school. When he died in 1966, a large bequest from his estate helped finance the construction of the new campus for CalArts, as the school would be known, on a 60-acre site in Valencia, and Congress authorized the minting of a special commemorative medal, which could be sold to benefit the school’s scholarship program. Eventually a character-animation curriculum would be established at CalArts, and many of the students would be selected to become Disney animators.
