Birmingham School of Art

The red-brick Victorian Gothic structure that is Birmingham School of Art has its origins within the auspices of the Royal Birmingham Society of Artists, who founded the Birmingham Government School of Design in 1843. In 1877, the Town Council was persuaded by the school's energetic headmaster Edward R. Taylor to take the school over and expand it to form the United Kingdom's first municipal college of art. As a result, the current building was commissioned from architect J H Chamberlain. An associated School of Architecture was formed in 1909 and received recognition by the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1923.

By the 1960's, the School had outgrown the original Margaret Street building and expanded into the campus of the University of Aston in Gosta Green. In 1971, with the founding of Birmingham Polytechnic, the School of Art lost its independence and became the Polytechnic's Faculty of Art and Design. In 1988, this in turn absorbed the former Bournville School of Art to form the Birmingham Institute of Art and Design, the largest centre for education in art, design and the media in the United Kingdom outside London. Birmingham Polytechnic gained university status in 1992 as the University of Central England. Unlike many other British art schools, Birmingham specialised in all the applied arts, becoming extremely influential and renowned for its teaching of metalwork, jewellery, enamels, design and book illustration as well as the usual painting and sculpting media. Famous alumni include Charles Gere, Arthur Gaskin, Henry Payne, Bernard Sleigh, Gerald Brockhurst, Maxwell Armfield and more recently, cartoonist Roland Emett and sculptor Raymond Mason.

Number of Artists referenced: 616