Lincoln School of Art

Lincoln School of Art has its origins like many other similar establishments in the art school movement that followed the 1851 Great Exhibition. The School was founded as a private venture, in February 1863 in a small room above Lincoln's Corn Exchange, its most important protagonist being, John Somerville Gibney, a canon at the nearby Lincoln Cathedral. Its first Headmaster was Edward Richard Taylor who went on the establish the Birmingham School of Art and founder of the Ruskin Pottery. So successful was the School that within a year it had relocated to larger premises and by 1869, the School was positioned in 6th place by the Department of Science and Art, after schools such as Edinburgh and Nottingham. By 1873 there were at least 130 schools of art in Britain, and Lincoln was rated in 9th place. Other well known alumni and Principals included William Logsdail, Frederick Hall, Fred Elwell, Alfred G. Webster, Peter Williams and Emily Bland.

The school has gone through a myriad of name changes which include City of Lincoln Municipal Technical School, Lincolnshire College of Art & Design and by the early 1990's as the School of Applied Arts & Design and eventually as of the School of Art & Design. These latter incarnations then formed part of the ever-expanding De Montfort University, Leicester. However by the millennium De Montfort expansion has ceased and surplus campus' including Lincoln were sold. In 2001, the School of Art was divided in two, between Lincoln College, Lincolnshire, which took many of the Further Education art courses, and the new University of Lincoln, which took the Higher Education art courses with degree status. Now as part of the University of Lincoln, the School is known as the Lincoln School of Art and Design, or LSAD. In 2013 the 150th anniversary of the founding of the School was celebrated at the University of Lincoln by exhibition entitled Lincoln School of Art: A Celebration of 150 Years.