HISTORIES - The Idea of the Art School in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain
Initiated and organised ‘The Idea of the Art School in Early Nineteenth-Century Britain’ Manton Studio Tate Britain 8 June 2010. With contributions from Professor Sir Christopher Frayling, Dr Martin Myrone, Dr Malcolm Quinn Professor Philip Schofield, Professor Richard Whatmore
The first publicly funded art school in Britain, the School of Design, opened in 1837. This seminar showed how the idea of the art school, as it was developed in the Select Committee on Arts and Manufactures of 1835/6, situated art, knowledge and pedagogy within public space. Following the Reform Bill of 1832, the idea of the public and the idea of the art school were brought together, in distinction from what was seen as the ambiguous, semi-private status of the Royal Academy of Arts. In this seminar, internationally acknowledged experts on the intellectual and artistic life of early nineteenth-century Britain, considered the idea of the art school in relation to the philosophy of utilitarianism, ideas of political economy, the role of the artist and the administration of public culture. Current debates on art school pedagogy and ‘the educational turn’ in art practice in the UK, have largely ignored the historical origins of the British art school. This seminar brought together staff and students from University of the Arts London, the ‘Art School Educated’ project at Tate Britain and from other institutions, to situate the idea of the art school within the development of a public visual culture in Britain in the early nineteenth century.
Initiated, co-organised and co-chaired On Liberty and Art, Clore Auditorium,Tate Britain 18 October 2006) Including contributions from Amanda Beech, Dave Beech, Pil and Galia Kollectiv, Malcolm Quinn John Russell, Bob and Roberta Smith, Roman Vasseur
How do artists engage with liberty as aesthetic practice, historical concept and public discourse? While artists are celebrated as icons of creative freedom, critical discourse on liberty through art is often accused of being naive, politically suspect, or socially irrelevant.
This year’s bicentennial of JS Mill, author of On Liberty (1859), is an occasion to re-examine how artists are promoted by the state and media as exemplars of personal liberty, creative individualism and the pursuit of happiness. In contrast, an address to liberty through art reveals how liberty as a supposedly self-evident and universal value is grounded in historical contingency, social pragmatism and cultural prohibitions.
Initiated and chaired panel on ‘Art History and the Art School’ at the Art Historian’s Conference, Leeds (7 April 2006).
‘Art History and the Art School’ The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, University of Oxford 6th March 2008.
Speakers included: Frederika Adam, doctoral student, University of Oxford Michael Archer, Head of School, The Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art Oxford Professor Mark Nash, Head of Department, Curating Contemporary Art, Royal College of Art, London Dr Malcolm Quinn, Reader in Critical Practice, Wimbledon College of Art, University of the Arts London Dr Katerina Reed-Tsocha, Lecturer in Art History, University of Oxford Professor Alex Seago, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Richmond University London.
This one day symposium examined the role that art history has played in the development of art education in the UK. Attitudes to art history are revealed in the evolution of practice, pedagogy and research in art schools, and in the development of their public role, from the elevation of taste in the nineteenth century to the challenging of cultural, aesthetic and educational norms in our own era. Grants for vocational art training were proposed only two years after the first government grant for any educational purpose, yet it was not until the first Coldstream report of 1960, that the history of art was studied within all art schools and examined for the diploma. Since Coldstream, art schools have become further integrated into the University sector, while the development of practice-led research has proposed new ways of integrating theory, practice and historical reflection.