Art Education in England and the Program at Leeds College

Abstract

ing with the fine art education. Others do not agree. Mr. Heron's article starts by saying that, A DISASTER of massive proportions is going unnoticed in the press. I'm referring to a development of major national significance, which every painter and sculptor I know has bitterly opposed since its inception; namely, the Government-decreed, and therefore forcible, absorption of nearly all the country's biggest and most important colleges of art by the new polytechnics. This dictated revolution has already created a situation which is tragic. Even if no one reads about it, this enforced marriage is turning the British art schools upside down and is the cause of profound bitterness and despair among almost everyone remotely connected with the teaching of fine art in particular. The brilliant success of the British art schools during the past ten years is not a matter of opinion: the whole Western world acknowledges it, even if Whitehall doesn't know what it's all about. Perhaps one should try to explain why it is that art educational experts from America, France, and Germany are amazed at what they find here-and will find no longer as art school after art school at Leeds (the most influential in Europe since the Bauhaus-thanks, among others to Harry Thubron), Manchester, Portsmouth, Bristol and the rest are engulfed and dismembered by a gigantic, all-embracing, impersonal polytechnic.