In 1985, the City of Paris commissioned Pontus Hulten to design a graduate school for research in contemporary art, similar in spirit to the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College in the U.S., to function as an alternative to the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts.
[1] Hulten conceived of the Institut as a center for contemporary research in artistic creation, with just 20 students, all graduates, each year.
[3] In 2012, the Biennale de Paris open a new Institut des hautes études en arts plastiques (IHEAP), according to its own viewpoints while also reactivating those of earlier institutions.
[citation needed] Drawing on the original model, the new IHEAP kept its name, intentions, idea of a simple structure, necessity of transversality and discussion, and its international dimension.
In March 2015, the French artist Daniel Buren, one of the professors in the original IHEAP, filed suit in the High Court of Paris against the newer IHEAP organization founded in 2012.