NEW New Art School
Howarth, Lucy (2025) NEW New Art School. In: 'Places and Spaces: The Architectures of Art and Design Education' session convened by Rose Gridneff (University of the Arts London) and Neil Drabble (Norwich University of the Arts) at the Association for Art History 2025 Annual Conference., 09/04/2025-11/04/2025, University of York. (Unpublished)
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The former ‘New’ Chelsea School of Art building on Manresa Road, off the King’s Road – an icon of the 1960s London art school ‘golden age’ – was demolished in 2010, after the college itself moved to its current home (the elegant Allies & Morrison barracks conversion next to Tate Britain on Millbank).
‘Manresa Road’ was a purpose-built art school many years in the planning, and established Chelsea as an institution, in contradistinction to what became the prevailing pattern of art schools folding into polytechnics during the 1970s. Through an archival account of how the design came about – between art educationalists (including Chelsea Principal Lawrence Gowing and Chairman of the NACAE William Coldstream) and architects of the London County Council – the correlation of utopianist values in post-war British society, modernist architecture and higher education in art, is mapped.
This research opens up questions about the relationship between architecture and the art school, buildings and pedagogy, pertinent at a time when flagship art school buildings such as Alsop’s Ben Pimlott building for Goldsmiths, the Stanton Williams King’s Cross development for Central St. Martin’s, and Herzog & de Meuron’s RCA Battersea are appearing – and art education is, as ever, in crisis.
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