The Leverhulme Trust funds two innovative research projects
17 December 2008
We have recently had great news that will help to transform the research landscape at Tate in the New Year. The Leverhulme Trust has awarded Tate's Research Department £468,471 to undertake a four-year project called "Art School Educated: Curriculum Change in UK Art Schools 1960-2010", which will greatly enrich our understanding of works by many of the artists in the Collection and produce findings that will enhance our gallery displays. This project will be starting in early summer 2009.
The project will address the fact that there is no comprehensive recent history of UK art schools in modern times. Art-historical accounts of artists’ training periods at art school have tended to be based on monographic principles and have relied on the artists’ unique perceptions of their own experience. Without denying the value of these statements and insights, our approach will be to reap the benefit of breadth, comparison and a thorough understanding of institutional history. Starting with a detailed study of the London art schools in the fifty years since the publication of the first Coldstream Report, and tracing developments through to the present day, Tate’s aim is to write a history with the potential to inform future developments in tertiary education for the so-called creative industries, an area of public policy of the highest economic priority.
The main objectives of the project will be to research and record the institutional and curriculum histories of the London art schools in the post-war period to reveal how art school education affected the intellectual formation and practice of the contemporary and recent artists whose work has entered Tate’s collection in recent years. Other objectives include the compiling of bibliographies and archival check-lists; establishing institutional chronologies; writing case studies of major schools and of key protagonists; the strengthening of archival holdings by rescuing vulnerable primary research materials; and, the recording of oral histories of key but often aged protagonists.
Tate intends to make an internationally significant contribution in this field. Our starting point is the present project, which focuses on the London art schools. On completing this four-year project, we will then undertake complementary research on selected regional schools within the UK such as Coventry, Glasgow, Leeds and Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Finally, it is envisaged that Tate will explore the establishment of an international research network to support the writing of comparative histories for Europe, North America and the British Colonies.
In addition, The Leverhulme Trust has also awarded an Artist Residency to Tate for the saxophonist and composer Tim Whitehead to undertake a project called "Colour Beginnings", which will support him in improvising and composing in response to works by Turner in Tate's collection and performing the results in our own and in partner galleries across the country. This residency will commence in January and will run for 10 months, culminating in a Late at Tate performance at Tate Britain in autumn 2009.
For further information about either of these projects, please contact the Head of Research, Professor Nigel Llewellyn (nigel.llewellyn@tate.org.uk).
Back to News
