Event: Exhibition – John Beck and Matthew Cornford: The Art Schools of the West Midlands | 16 May – 28 June 2024 at Martin Hall Gallery, Loughborough University
An exhibition of original photographic images of the Midlands’ forty-eight art school buildings, along with a display of historical images and archival ephemera. See https://www.lboro.ac.uk/arts/whats-on/the-art-schools-of-the-midlands/
About this exhibition
Loughborough University’s Martin Hall Gallery (Loughborough LE11 3TU) presents The Art Schools of the Midlands, the latest iteration of John Beck and Matthew Cornford’s ambitious Art School Project exploring the history and legacies of the nation’s art schools. The project combines original photography, textual and archival materials to examine the vital role art schools have played, and continue to play, in the cultural and economic life of our towns and cities.
The twin Victorian engines of industrial ambition and social reform powered the British art school system, which developed by the end of the nineteenth century into a complex network of institutions providing training and exposure to the arts to thousands of workers and students across the country. By the mid-1960s there were still over 150 art schools in the UK, by which time ‘art school’ had become shorthand for creative innovation across the arts, design, music and advertising. Yet at the peak of their influence on British cultural life, art schools in many towns and cities were already being amalgamated, reorganised and rebranded as part of a drive to reshape education in the arts. Most art schools have long since been absorbed into larger institutions, many of the buildings repurposed or demolished.
The Loughborough exhibition focuses on the impressive number of art schools located in the Midlands and features original photographic images of all 48 sites from across the region, from Hereford to Boston, Chesterfield to Northampton, alongside a display of archival images and ephemera focusing specifically on the history of Loughborough College of Art. The Art Schools of the Midlands is at once an exploration of a key aspect of the civic and architectural history of the region since the mid-nineteenth century and also, importantly, an investigation of our present moment, recording the sites of former art schools which have been redeveloped or reused.
The exhibition aims to create a space for dialogue and debate, raising questions about the role of the arts and art education in relation to community, history, and identity, and the shifting complex role of cultural production and cultural labour in the contemporary environment.
Image credit: The former Loughborough School of Art, Matthew Cornford.
Posted by Karen Gainsford