Paper at International Standing Conference for the History of Education, Porto, 19 July: Pictures for Schools: Critical education in the art gallery and the classroom
Posted: July 10, 2019 Filed under: post-war, Uncategorized | Tags: art, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, children, citizenship, conferences, criticism, critics, Education, Educators, Henry Morris, historical research, history, History of Education, Nan Youngman, Pictures for Schools, post-war, public art, schools, talk Leave a commentI am delighted to have had the following paper accepted for the International Standing Conference for the History of Education at the University of Porto next week.
Pictures for Schools: Critical education in the art gallery and the classroom
Pictures for Schools was founded by the artist and educationalist Nan Youngman (1906-1995) to sell affordable works of art by contemporary British artists to educational establishments across the country, including schools, teacher training colleges and local education authorities.
One aim of the scheme was to change the physical spaces in which children’s education took place by making them visually stimulating. Another, equally important motivation, was to develop children’s skills as critical observers, which could then be applied to the places which surrounded them, and the consumer choices they would make as the citizens of the future.
At the first Pictures for Schools exhibition, which took place in 1947 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, children who visited were asked to express their preferences by voting for their favourite exhibit. These preferences were later discussed in accounts of the exhibitions by the organisers, and received with great interest by the press. At later exhibitions, which took place annually at various London art galleries until 1969, visiting school groups were given questionnaires which aimed to encourage them to look closely at the artworks on show, with the questions varying slightly each year. Some questions placed the artworks in relation to children’s own experiences of creating art, encouraging respondents to identify and compare elements such as technique, media, subject matter, styles and genre. Others positioned children as critics, asking them to discuss the artworks they felt were most successful. Children were also encouraged to imagine themselves as future patrons and consumers of the arts, by stating which artwork they would like to take home with them if they were able to.
This paper will explore the ways in which Pictures for Schools offered children a critical education across two types of educational spaces, the art gallery and the classroom. It will visit a series of educational spaces where, in the decade leading up to the Second World War, Youngman established the value of the active, participatory form of art education which would be promoted through Pictures for Schools. These include Youngman’s teacher training at London Day Training College, her time teaching art in girls’ schools in the 1920s, and the decade she spent as peripatetic art advisor to Henry Morris, Director of Education in Cambridgeshire, from 1944 onwards.
The critical education offered through Pictures for Schools will then be placed within a wider context of post-war Britain. After the Second World War, the formal education system was extended. At the same time, opportunities for informal education and cultural experiences went beyond the school, museum and art gallery to encompass public and leisure spaces such as town centres, shopping centres, libraries and housing estates, where citizens were asked to be critical observers of the places and objects which surrounded them every day. This paper will explore the role of artworks as a pedagogical tool and argue that Pictures for Schools played a part in developing the skills of future citizens who were required to play an active, critical part in post-war reconstruction and society.
For more information about the conference visit http://www.fpce.up.pt/ische2019.
I will be taking part in session 4.10, which takes place on Friday 19 July from 9am-11am.
Sale of Hertfordshire County Council’s collection
Posted: February 14, 2019 Filed under: post-war | Tags: art, Art history, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, collections, Hertfordshire, John Newsom, loan collections, painting, Pictures for Schools, post-war 2 CommentsSad news from Hertfordshire, where the county council is following in the steps of Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire and selling the bulk of its impressive educational art collection. The collection was founded in 1949 by pioneering Director of Education John Newsom for loan to the county’s schools, as part of an extensive programme of school building and educational reform, and purchased artworks by leading British artists from Pictures for Schools among other sources. This is no particular surprise given that the loan service was suspended in 2012, staff who had previously been involved in its operations were made redundant and it was extremely difficult (impossible?) to get anyone from the council to answer any of my enquiries about it during my PhD.
This follows a ‘consultation’ on the future of the collection at the start of 2018, which was couched in terms which made the sale sound like it was a foregone conclusion, and a petition by local woman Armaiti Bedford against the sale of the works, which was signed by thousands of people.
The sale is being handled by Cheffins in Cambridge, who handled the (highly lucrative) sale of the Cambridgeshire art collection in 2017, and the first auction, of paintings, takes place on 21 March.
The sale has received a few passing mentions in the regional and national press; for more information see www.artlyst.com/news/hertfordshire-county-council-sells-off-art-assets.
Inexpensive Progress on Pictures for Schools in Cambridgeshire
Posted: June 28, 2018 Filed under: post-war | Tags: art, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, loan collections, Pictures for Schools, school loans services, schools Leave a commentThis fascinating blog post by Inexpensive Progress, a Cambridgeshire-based writer and collector, sheds some light on the fate of some of the work from the Cambridgeshire Collection of Original Artworks for Children, as well as giving details about the scheme’s history in Cambridge and some of the artists involved.
Tadek Beutlich in Ditchling
Posted: March 6, 2017 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: Abstract art, art, Cambridge, Cambridgeshire, collections, craft, East Sussex, Folkestone, loan collections, Pictures for Schools, post-war, prints, textiles, weaving 1 CommentAn artist whose work was very popular at Pictures for Schools in the 1960s is the Polish-born printmaker and weaver Tadek Beutlich (1922-2011). Between 1963 and 1969 Beutlich, along with his wife Ellen, sold work to county council and school loan collections including Buckinghamshire, Manchester, West Sussex, Hertfordshire, the London County Council, Nottingham, Cambridge and the Inner London Education Authority Circulating Pictures Scheme, as well as Sion Manning School in Ladbroke Grove, London, Dunningford County Junior School in Hornchurch, Essex and Uppingham School.
Beutlich’s colourful, striking work is among my favourite to be shown at Pictures for Schools, so I loved the chance to see it in real life at two exhibitions in the picturesque and crafty village of Ditchling, East Sussex, which sits under the spectacular green hills of the South Downs, where he lived and worked for several years in the 1960s and 1970s. Tadek Beutlich ‘Beyond Craft’ is currently on at the Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft, and shows a small selection of his prints as well as textile sculptures, drawn from the Beutlich family collection as well as the nearby Royal Pavilion in Brighton.
I was surprised by how big and vibrant the prints are when seen in person (I’d previously only seen them on a screen). Whilst some focus in on elements such as birds’ beaks, and depict insects, creating pattern from detail, many are more generalised responses to natural phenomena and processes such as radiation, germination, pollination, sun, heatwaves and sunsets, using layered relief prints from objects such as foam and wood and experimenting with the process of mark-making as the basis for imagery and composition in a limited yet effective colour palette of reds/oranges, greens and purples.
A much larger selection of Beutlich’s work and output, drawn from his studio, is on display – and for sale – for a short time only at the Jointure Studios down the road. This shows the range of Beutlich’s work and his experimentation with materials, from different types of grasses and fibres to PVA glue, to create responses to organic forms such as shoots and fungus, as well as vertical wall hangings incorporating objects such as X-Ray tape. Also on display are teaching aids used by Beutlich, who taught at Camberwell School of Art as well as later running workshops and exhibiting at the Metropole Galleries in Folkestone; his wife Ellen, a former tapestry student of his at Camberwell, still lives in the town. At Camberwell, Beutlich worked with another printmaker who sold work at Pictures for Schools, Michael Rothenstein, and devised his own inventive methods for printing that didn’t involve the use of a printing press.
Among the prints on display is Radiation II, which was sold to Buckinghamshire education committee as well as the Catholic Sion Manning School in Ladbroke Grove, London. Out of all the artists whose work was selected to hang and be sold at Pictures for Schools, Beutlich’s is the easiest to imagine capturing children’s attention and making a visual impression in post-war schools, particularly among the relatively blank slate environments of system-built schools. In its colour and bold shapes, it’s unmistakeable both as Beutlich’s work and as a product of the 1960s, when both art and science sought both new understandings of and new ways of representing the world and its natural forms.
Tadek Beutlich – Prints and Textiles is at the Jointure Studios until 12 March.
Tadek Beutlich – Beyond Craft is at Ditchling Museum of Art and Craft until 16 April.
Guest blog post for the Cambridge Primary Review Trust (and a note on Isabel Alexander)
Posted: January 16, 2015 Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: art, artists, Cambridge, Cambridge Primary Review Trust, Cambridgeshire, collections, Essex, Isabel Alexander, loan collections, Painters, Pictures for Schools, schools 1 CommentFurther to the reference in my last blog post about the fascinating stories behind some of the artists submitting and selling work through Pictures for Schools, and the frustrations of trying to find information about some of these artists, many of whose names are no longer known, I recently received an email from Professor Robin Alexander, Chair of the Cambridge Primary Review Trust, whose mother, the painter Isabel Alexander, submitted several paintings and lithographs to Pictures for Schools over a five-year period in the 1960s. Professor Alexander told me that though she exhibited widely at the time and attracted “quite a following”, with her work represented in public collections, she remains relatively unknown today. I was able to tell Professor Alexander about some of the buyers of his mother’s work (primarily landscapes, although she had moved towards more abstract work by this point), which included Godolphin and Latymer School in Hammersmith, Nottingham Education Committee and Cambridge Education Committee (which still appears to have the work in its collection) and in return he sent me some images of her bold, vibrant paintings and illustrations and a brief biography.
Isabel Alexander had a long and interesting life and I wad pleased to hear about her story. After Birmingham School of Art she taught briefly and then attended the Slade, before returning to teaching in Bromley, Banbury and Rotherham and later lecturing at Saffron Walden Training College. Professor Alexander told me that she was a member of the Society for Education through Art and subscribed to its journal Athene, so was well aware of developments in education. She travelled in Europe and went on to work in the documentary film movement in the 1940s. Her painting and illustrative work included drawing for Mass Observation, social documentary work of Welsh towns and miners and illustrating Puffin picture books. Pictures for Schools had strong links with East Anglia and Essex (with the Great Bardfield group of artists being closely involved with the scheme), and Isabel Alexander lived in Thaxted in Essex. Along with Pictures for Schools, she also contributed to a scheme for Pictures in Essex Hospitals.
After corresponding about my research and the work of Isabel Alexander over email, Professor Alexander invited me to contribute a guest blog post to the CPRT blog, partly to raise awareness and partly to try and stimulate debate about the role of original artworks in schools today and the value of the creative curriculum, which has now been published at http://cprtrust.org.uk/cprt-blog/pictures-for-schools-a-brilliant-idea-worth-reviving-or-an-expensive-luxury.