News | University of Brighton Design Archives

A black and white photograph showing beer-pump handles exhibited at the exhibition Black Eyes and Lemonade at the Whitechapel Art Gallery, 1951.

To Hell With Culture?

‘To hell with culture’ is a phrase borrowed from Eric Gill and employed by Herbert Read to open – as well as to entitle – his important essay of 1941 on culture and democracy. It is a theme that will be explored as part of a two-day conference ‘Victorian Futures: Culture and Democracy from the…

A black and white photograph showing The Royal Corinthian Yacht Club, Burnham on Crouch, 1931. Taken from the Joseph Emberton Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Joseph Emberton: the architecture of display

The Joseph Emberton Archive has been part of the University of Brighton Design Archives since 2002. This exhibition for Pallant House, curated by Professor Catherine Moriarty and Design Archives Archivist and Research Fellow, Sue Breakell, showcases items from the collection alongside loans from the RIBA Library to explore the buildings of this significant twentieth-century architect. In…

An image showing a font with Japanese text with some English names.

Design Archives in Japan

The Design Archives were represented at a symposium on design resources and research organized by the Design History Workshop Japan. At the invitation of Professor Iguchi Toshino of Saitama University, the work of the University of Brighton Design Archives was presented alongside that of the Musashino Art University Design Archives; the Tanaka Ikko Archive at…

A black and white photographs showing a God Save The Queen paper lantern. Taken from the Design Council Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Curating the past: the monument, the archive and the database

Catherine Moriarty, Professor of Art and Design History presents her inaugural lecture. How the past is represented in the present has always been central to many branches of the humanities. This lecture explores a number of the frameworks within which the past is situated in the present through consideration of particular ‘sites of memory’ with…

A colour photograph showing a person's hands holding an iPad and an iPhone

Design Archives win AHRC award

Developing a critical position on digital environments and digital content, and considering what this means for researchers, is central to the work of the university’s Design Archives. A successful bid in the latest round of AHRC Digital Transformation awards ensures the university remains in a key position in this area of debate. As Principal Investigator,…

A detail from an article from the Industrial Design magazine from February 1957, showing a woman with a stylish car. Taken from the Design Council Archive housed at the University of Brighton Design Archives.

Design Archives material in significant London exhibitions

Material from the Design Archives collections can currently be seen in two important exhibitions at major London galleries. Tate’s substantial new survey of the work of founding Pop artist Richard Hamilton includes three of our bound volumes of Design magazine, the journal of the Council of Industrial Design, from February 1968. Displayed in vitrines, the magazines show…

Colour photograph of Leah Armstrong doing research in the University of Brighton Design Archives

What happens when cultural institutions and academics collaborate?

Leah Armstrong, one of the Faculty’s AHRC Collaborative Doctoral Award students, is speaking at a national conference ‘Making Connections: Collaboration in Research and Practice, on 10 January 2014. Her paper ‘Professionalism and the Designer: Connecting Past and Present’ draws on her doctoral research which connects design historical scholarship and the digital humanities in new ways….

Colour photograph of designers looking through the Icograda Archive at the University of Brighton Design Archives

Curating Popular Art

Building on the critical and popular success of the current exhibition Black Eyes and Lemonade at the Whitechapel Gallery, Faculty researchers are among the designers, curators and artists speaking at a study day on Friday 14 June. Join Simon Costin, Liz Farrelly, Jeff McMillan, Catherine Moriarty, Martin Myrone, Louise Purbrick and Penelope Sexton who will be examining the…

A still from Get Rid of Yourself digital video by Bernadette Corporation, 2003.

Radical [vs?] Institution: Revisiting Archives to Form the Future

The current Design Archives project at the Whitechapel Art Gallery Black Eyes & Lemonade: Curating Popular Art will be discussed at an ICA seminar on 5 June. Asking if the relationship between radical collectives and institutional structures in the arts is paradoxical, the event looks at how, through the use of archive materials, institutions have habitually probed…