Aunque los artistas pueden estudiar a tiempo completo, nunca ha habido títulos o grados, y esta actitud informal impregna la cultura de la escuela.
El grupo de estudiantes escindido, que incluía a muchas mujeres, se ubicó en un primer momento en varias habitaciones alquiladas en el cruce entre 16th Street y la Quinta Avenida.
[7] En su biografía oficial, Mis Aventuras como ilustrador, Norman Rockwell relató su época de estudiante en la escuela cuando era joven, proporcionando información sobre su funcionamiento en los primeros años del 1900.
La mayoría de los contratos han sido por uno o dos años, y algunos, como los del escultor George Grey Barnard, fueron aún más breves.
En 1988, Robert Cenedella tomó posesión de la cátedra George Grosz y actualmente imparte tres cursos.
[11] Otros conocidos artistas que han ejercido como instructores son Lawrence Alloway, Charles Alston, Will Barnet, Robert Beauchamp, George Bellows, Thomas Hart Benton, Isabel Bishop, Arnold Blanch, Louis Bouche, Robert Brackman, George Bridgman, Alexander Stirling Calder, Naomi Andrée Campbell, Robert Cenedella, William Merritt Chase, Dionisio Cimarelli, Timothy J. Clark, Kenyon Cox, Jose De Creeft, John Steuart Curry, Stuart Davis, Edwin Dickinson, Sidney Dickinson, Frederick Dielman, Harvey Dinnerstein, Arthur Wesley Dow, Frank DuMond, Frank Duveneck, Thomas Eakins, Daniel Chester French, Dagmar Freuchen, Wilhelmina Weber Furlong, Michael Goldberg, Stephen Greene, George Grosz, Lena Gurr, Philip Guston, Robert Beverly Hale, Lovell Birge Harrison, Ernest Haskell, Childe Hassam, Robert Henri, Eva Hesse, Charles Hinman, Hans Hofmann, Harry Holtzman, Jamal Igle, Burt Johnson, Wolf Kahn, Morris Kantor, Rockwell Kent, Walt Kuhn, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Gabriel Laderman, Ronnie Landfield, Jacob Lawrence, Hayley Lever, Martin Lewis, George Luks, Paul Manship, Reginald Marsh, Fletcher Martin, Knox Martin, Jan Matulka, Mary Beth Mckenzie, William Charles McNulty, Willard Metcalf, Kenneth Hayes Miller, F. Luis Mora, Robert Neffson, Kimon Nicolaïdes, Maxfield Parrish, Jules Pascin, Joseph Pennell, Richard C. Pionk, Larry Poons, Richard Pousette-Dart, Abraham Rattner, Peter Reginato, Frank J. Reilly, Henry Reuterdahl, Boardman Robinson, Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Kikuo Saito, Nelson Shanks, William Scharf, Susan Louise Shatter, Walter Shirlaw, John Sloan, Hughie Lee-Smith, Isaac Soyer, Raphael Soyer, Theodoros Stamos, Anita Steckel, Harry Sternberg, Augustus Vincent Tack, George Tooker, John Henry Twachtman, Vaclav Vytlacil, Max Weber, J. Alden Weir, and William Zorach.
[12] La lista de antiguos alumnos destacados de la escuela incluye a: Edwin Tappan Adney, Ai Weiwei, Gladys Aller, William Anthony, Nela Arias-Misson, Milton Avery, Elizabeth Gowdy Baker, Thomas R. Ball, Hugo Ballin, Will Barnet, Saul Bass, C. C. Beall, Romare Bearden, Thomas Bezanson, Thomas Hart Benton, Isabel Bishop, Dorothy Block, Leonard Bocour, Harriet Bogart, Abraham Bogdanove, Lee Bontecou, Henry Botkin, Louise Bourgeois, Stanley Boxer, Louise Brann, D. Putnam Brinley, James Brooks, Carmen L. Browne, Jennie Augusta Brownscombe, Feliza Bursztyn, Theodore Earl Butler, Paul Cadmus, Alexander Calder, Chris Campbell, John F. Carlson, Paul Chalfin, Ching Ho Cheng, Margaret Covey Chisholm, Kate Freeman Clark, Henry Ives Cobb, Jr., Claudette Colbert, Willie Cole, John Connell, Allyn Cox, Ellis Credle, Richard V. Culter, Mel Cummin, Frederick Stuart Church, Joan Danziger, Andrew Dasburg, Adolf Dehn, Dorothy Dehner, Sidney Dickinson, Burgoyne Diller, Ellen Eagle, Marjorie Eaton, Sir Jacob Epstein, Marisol Escobar, Joe Eula, Philip Evergood, Peter Falk, Ernest Fiene, Irving Fierstein, Louis Finkelstein, Wilhelmina Weber Furlong, Helen Frankenthaler, Frederick Carl Frieseke, Wanda Gág, Dan Gheno, Charles Dana Gibson, William Glackens, Elias Goldberg, Michael Goldberg, Shirley Goldfarb, Peter Golfinopoulos, Adolph Gottlieb, Blanche Grambs, John D. Graham, Enrique Grau, Nancy Graves, Clement Greenberg, Stephen Greene, Red Grooms, Chaim Gross, Lena Gurr, Bessie Pease Gutmann, Minna Harkavy, Marsden Hartley, Julius Hatofsky, Ethel Hays, Gus Heinze, Al Held, Carmen Herrera, Eva Hesse, Al Hirschfeld, Itshak Holtz, Lorenzo Homar, Winslow Homer, Thomas Hoving, Paul Jenkins, Alice Sargent Johnson, Burt Johnson, Donald Judd, Torleif S. Knaphus, Belle Kogan, Lee Krasner, Ronnie Landfield, Adelaide Lawson, Arthur Lee, Alfred Leslie, Roy Lichtenstein, Tom Loepp, Michael Loew, John Marin, Reginald Marsh, Knox Martin, Donald Martiny, Mercedes Matter, Louisa Matthiasdottir, Peter Max, John Alan Maxwell, Eleanore Mikus, Emil Milan, Lee Miller, F. Luis Mora, Walter Tandy Murch, Reuben Nakian, Louise Nevelson, Barnett Newman, Isamu Noguchi, Sassona Norton, Elizabeth Nottingham, Georgia O'Keeffe, Lyn Ott, Tom Otterness, Clara Weaver Parrish, Betty Parsons, Phillip Pavia,[13] Roger Tory Peterson, Bert Geer Phillips, I. Rice Pereira, Alain J. Picard, Jackson Pollock, Fairfield Porter, Edith Mitchill Prellwitz, Henry Prellwitz, Robert Rauschenberg, Man Ray, Charles M. Relyea, Frederic Remington, Norman Rockwell, Louise Emerson Ronnebeck, Herman Rose, Leonard Rosenfeld, James Rosenquist, Sanford Ross, Mark Rothko, Glen Rounds, Morgan Russell, Abbey Ryan,[14] Sam Savitt, Louis Schanker, Mary Schepisi, Katherine Schmidt, Emily Maria Scott, Ethel Schwabacher, Joan Semmel, Maurice Sendak, Ben Shahn, Nelson Shanks, Nat Mayer Shapiro, Henrietta Shore, Jessamine Shumate, David Smith, Tony Smith, Robert Smithson, Louise Hammond Willis Snead, Armstrong Sperry, Otto Stark, William Starkweather, Frank Stella, Joseph Stella, Inga Stephens Pratt Clark, Harry Sternberg, Clyfford Still, Soichi Sunami, Katharine Lamb Tait, Patty Prather Thum, George Tooker, Kim Tschang-yeul, Wen-Ying Tsai, Cy Twombly, Jack Tworkov, Edward Charles Volkert, Alonzo C. Webb, Davyd Whaley, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, Adolph Alexander Weinman, J. Alden Weir, Stow Wengenroth, Pennerton West, Anita Willets-Burnham, Ellen Axson Wilson, Gahan Wilson, Alice Morgan Wright, Russel Wright, Art Young, Philip Zuchman e Iván Zulueta.