Royal College of Art

Royal College of Art (RCA), London. Britain's pre-eminent training school for artists and designers. Since 1967 it has been a postgraduate university institution, but it has had many changes of status, name, and location since it was founded in 1837 at Somerset House as the School of Design ( William Dyce was a key figure in its early days). Originally it taught industrial design, the fine arts being the province of the Royal Academy. In 1852 it moved to Marlborough House and was renamed the Central School of Practical Art. It became part of the Government Department of Science and Art in 1853 and in 1857, renamed the National Art Training School, it moved to South Kensington with the Museum of Ornamental Art (later the Victoria and Albert Museum). In 1863 it moved to new buildings in Exhibition Road, and in 1896 it was renamed the Royal College of Art by Queen Victoria and allowed to grant diplomas. Walter Crane was principal in 1898–9.

By the turn of the century the RCA had turned much more to fine art, away from industrial design, and by the 1920s it rivalled the Slade School as the most important art school in the country; William Rothenstein was principal at this time and the students included Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. By the end of the Second World War the RCA had become rather stagnant, but it was given new life by Sir Robert ( Robin) Darwin (1910–74), who was head from 1948 to 1971 (in 1967 his title changed from principal to rector). Darwin introduced new departments, including fashion design and photography, aligned the RCA more closely with industry (he aimed to ‘provide courses of a thoroughly practical nature in all primary industrial fields’), and revitalized the teaching staff (he said that when he joined ‘two of the five professors were alleged not to have exchanged a word for fifteen years’). His overall concern was to make the RCA a ‘magnet for talent’. It was during Darwin's long period in charge—generally reckoned the RCA's golden age—that it moved to its present home, a new eight-storey building in Kensington Gore (1961). Its absolute peak of esteem perhaps came in the late 1950s and early 1960s with the generation of students who were largely responsible for launching British Pop art, including Hockney and Allen Jones.