The Royal College of Art: A History of Innovation and Adaptation
Founded in 1837 as the Government School of Design, the Royal College of Art (RCA) has undergone significant transformations throughout its history. From its initial focus on industrial design to its current status as the world's leading university of art and design, the RCA has consistently adapted to meet the evolving needs of the art world and the broader global landscape.
Early Years: Training Tradespeople
The RCA's initial mandate was to train future tradespeople, such as textile and ceramics workers, in the techniques of art and design. This rigorous education in drawing, with an emphasis on ornament and design, was intended to improve British industry, which lagged behind French and German manufacturing at the time.
In the 1850s, the school became part of Prince Albert’s plan to construct a colony of cultural institutions in South Kensington around Hyde Park. It moved from its first home at Somerset House to this area. Its collection of casts, architectural fragments, sculpture, and design objects used for instruction formed part of the collection of the new Museum of Manufacture (now the Victoria and Albert Museum).
Transition to Fine Arts
Although it was renamed the Royal College of Art in 1896, it was not until the tenure of William Rothenstein in the 1920s and ’30s that it became a crucial center for the postgraduate training of fine artists. Rothenstein’s tenure produced two of the school’s most distinguished alumni, Henry Moore and Barbara Hepworth, both of who have come to strongly define British modernism. Distinguished fine artists have continued to emerge from the RCA’s halls, including prominent Pop/Op figures such as Peter Blake, David Hockney, and Bridget Riley; material experimenters like Richard Deacon and Tony Cragg; and the brash YBAs Tracey Emin, Jake and Dinos Chapman, Chris Ofili, and Gavin Turk.
Expansion and Modernization
As one might imagine, the RCA has been rethought and restructured over its 178-year history. It has moved, changed focus, and expanded; in many ways, renewal and redevelopment are part of the school’s DNA. Now boasting a student body of over 1,400, the South Kensington facilities have become inadequate. Three modern multistory buildings clustered around a small plaza-like street sit in the shadow of the grand Royal Albert Hall. Together they form a tight network of classrooms, workshops, offices, exhibition spaces, and research facilities, in which students and faculty use every conceivable space.
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The necessity of the Battersea expansion, a cluster of clean, modern buildings just off Battersea Bridge Road and steps from the south bank of the Thames, became apparent. The Battersea campus has eased some of these spatial limitations, allowing the studio-based students in the School of Fine Art to breathe more easily. While the sculpture program has had a presence in this section of south London for many years, the remainder of the School of Fine Art (the painting, printmaking, and photography programs) only began the migration over to this side of the Thames in 2010. Studios are shared but generous in size, possessing qualities and amenities suited to each discipline. While the sculpture studios feature a more open plan and high ceilings, and include an on-site foundry, the printmaking facilities in the recently opened Dyson Building feature all of the machinery needed for different printmaking processes, including intaglio, lithography, and screen printing, as well as a digital studio with 3-D printers.
The RCA's new Battersea campus is the manifestation of a bold vision that unites art and design with science, technology, mathematics and medicine, providing an academic home to a diverse range of students - from computer scientists, robotics engineers and product designers to writers, curators and sculptors. Designed by architects Herzog & de Meuron, the campus adds 15,500 m2 to the footprint of the university, delivering enhanced workshop and studio infrastructure for students and offering social and educational spaces as a meeting point for talent and ideas.
With all the different disciplines to be housed in the new Battersea building, finding a product that could meet the assorted workplace, storage and other micro-architectural requirements proved to be a major challenge for the RCA, particularly as it also needed to be easy to move and stow away to make room for larger events. The RCA found a solution to these requirements with Vitra's Comma office system and equipped the 2nd and 3rd floors using a combination of workstations - in standing and sitting heights, with and without castors - and storage elements. To achieve maximum flexibility and interchangeability, the units are configured in the same dimensions with identical diagonal and cross beams. For the visual and acoustic separation of different areas, the RCA relies on acoustic polyester fleece panels and whiteboards integrated in Comma. In addition, Dancing Walls and the Tip Ton chair developed by RCA alumni Edward Barber and Jay Osgerby were also selected to furnish the interior spaces.
Academic Structure and Programs
The RCA offers a Graduate Diploma pre-masters conversion programme, MA, MRes, MPhil and PhD degrees in twenty-eight subject areas, divided into four schools: architecture, arts & humanities, communication, and design. In addition to formal qualifications the RCA also offers Summer school and Executive education courses throughout the year. In early 2019, the RCA announced the launch of its new GenerationRCA programme. The Royal College of Art also participates in UArctic's mobility program north2north.
The RCA's approach is founded on the premise that art, design, creative thinking, science, engineering and technology must all collaborate to solve today's global challenges. The RCA is home to more than 850 of the world’s leading academic and professional staff who teach and develop students in 34 academic programmes.
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Evolution of the Logo
While the provided text does not explicitly detail the history of the RCA logo, it alludes to the institution's broader identity and branding efforts. The Royal Academy of Arts, another prominent British institution, underwent a rebranding process with Pentagram, highlighting the importance of visual identity in representing an organization's values and mission. Pentagram worked alongside Jane Wentworth and Will Dallimore at the RA on the strategy and communication of a new identity. The challenge was to produce a set of design principles appropriated from the RA’s history but expressed in a modernist form, and to develop a visual language that would not be lost in the background but could also stand with authority in the foreground. The design system Pentagram created allows the Academy to become a confident and sensitive author of all its visual material.
Given the RCA's history of adaptation and modernization, it is likely that the college's logo has also evolved over time to reflect its changing identity and strategic goals. A detailed exploration of the RCA logo's history would require further research into the college's archives and design-related publications.
Focus on Research and Interdisciplinarity
The technical education offered to fine art students is balanced by a rigorous, conceptual, and research-based approach to the discipline. All students must complete an MA dissertation, which can take a number of forms, from academic essay to research-intensive artist’s book. The term “research” kept reappearing in conversations I had with faculty and in the school’s literature, almost as if it was an institutional mantra. But, with the expansion of PhD programs in fine art in the last decade or so (the RCA issued its first in 1979) and the popularity of the term “research-based practice” to describe the work of so many artists, its frequency came as no surprise. As Juan Cruz suggested, research methods offer new opportunities for artists who don’t want to be “instrumentalized,” and choose not “to feed the market.”
To foster interdisciplinary student explorations, all fine art students have access to all the facilities and can sign up for the same technical instruction across disciplines. As Stockham notes, students often seek out the points of contact between the different programs on their own terms. While her students in the printmaking program certainly share aesthetic concerns and problems with those in painting and photography, some have even explored sculpture through the lens of the print, considering the “relationship between the matrix and the mold.” In my short visit I met a sculptor who also works with photography, and a student who, although she came to the RCA for its on-site foundry, has now turned to filmmaking. Avenues of exchange also exist across the entire college. The Critical & Historical Studies program, housed in the School of Humanities, offers seminars in the history of visual culture (a required class) and a steady schedule of lectures by artists and thinkers. Each term the entire college devotes one week of its schedule to AcrossRCA, a series of classes that include walking tours with artists, lectures, and workshops, giving students from different disciplines the opportunity to meet and work together.
Preparing Artists for the Contemporary Art World
The kind of artist the RCA envisions is not just a maker or producer, but also a marketer and spin doctor, an operator within a vast network of possibilities. While the end-of-term critique is one opportunity to teach students how to operate, each program has developed its own relationships with outside institutions to increase their connectivity to this network. To this end, Baseman has secured two prizes for students in the sculpture program: one, a studio space at the esteemed Matt’s Gallery in East London with mentorship from the gallery director Robin Klassnik; and two, a month-long residency at Yorkshire Sculpture Park. In the printmaking program, students can participate in an annual exhibition at a commercial London gallery as well as regular publishing projects, with funds provided by the school and a well-known benefit postcard sale. Publications also serve as promotional tools for both the school and students. The wealth of printed material produced across the RCA is impressive. Ranging from exhibition catalogs (from the Curating Contemporary Art program) to anthologies of writing (from the Critical Writing in Art & Design program) and artist books, many programs actively document their activities with publications. In many cases, the production of a book is an integral part of the course, as either a demonstration of craft, scholarship, or professional skill.
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