This week the project reported some of its
achievements and discoveries to an international conference of art and
architectural historians (amongst others).
The Third
Biannual conference of the European Network for Avant-Garde and Modernism
Studies (EAM) was held at the University of Kent, 7-9 September 2012. In a panel on
‘Matters of Learning Material: Education
through Art, Art through Education’
Jeremy Howard spoke on ‘Wellington
Monuments: Interpreting and contextualizing Hubert Wellington’s strategy for
permanent art in modern schools in 1930s Edinburgh’,
Catherine Burke on ‘Concealment and
exposure: the story of the Barbara Mildred Jones mural “Adam Naming the
Animals” (1959-2009)’, and
Peter Cunningham on ‘Art in the
curriculum and art on the walls: Primary education the 1950s’.
It was, however a week of highs and lows for decorated schools as
the panel also had to report on two very recent incidents affecting works featured
recently on this blog. One is the
discovery of structural damage to Peter Peri’s spectacular 1961 sculpture
‘Welcome’ at Greenhead College,
Huddersfield: http://www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2012/09/04/greenhead-college-statue-known-as-gladys-to-be-removed-amid-safety-fears-86081-31759957/2/
The second is a fire that destroyed one wing of Sawston Village
College, Cambridgeshire:
Both events are reminders of the natural threats to decorated schools,
additional to the challenges posed by shifts in political or
administrative attitudes towards individual works of art, and changing
aesthetic tastes, resulting in negligence or worse. Conservation
issues remain central to our project.
