National College of Art and Design

The National College of Art and Design (NCAD) is Ireland's oldest art institution, offering the largest range of art and design degrees at undergraduate and postgraduate level in the country. Originating as a drawing school in 1746, many of the most important Irish artists, designers and art educators have studied or taught in the college. NCAD has always been located in central Dublin, and in 1980 it relocated to the historic Liberties area. The College has around 950 full-time students and a further 600 pursuing part-time courses, and NCAD's students come from more than forty countries. NCAD is a Recognised College of University College Dublin. It is also a member of the European League of Institutes of the Arts. History Overview The National College of Art and Design can trace its origins in an unbroken line back to the drawing school set up by Robert West in George's Lane, in 1746, and then sponsored by the Dublin Society. The institution has been influenced in turn by the French Enlightenment, the Victorian schools of design, including industrial design, the Arts and Crafts movement, the search for Irish national identity and innovations in British art education in the 1960s. The school has also played a role in Irish social and cultural developments - it had a significant influence on the eighteenth century Irish school of painting and sculpture and it also affected the standard of applied ornament in architecture and crafts. Most Irish artists of importance have spent some time in the college, and in the twentieth century the teaching staff has included Sir William Orpen, Oliver Sheppard, Oswald Reeves, Harry Clarke, Seán Keating, Maurice MacGonigal, Laurence Campbell and Bernardus Romein. The opening up of Irish culture in the 1960s had a profound effect on the college, resulting in years of student disturbances and closures by the government. Central to this was the debate about Modernism versus traditional discipline and the control exercised by the Department of Education and its predecessors. There was also the pressure for industrial design reform in face of the new economic future of an independent Ireland, and again within the Common Market. The consequence of all this revolution was a statute of 1971 which re-established the college, granting it freedom to run its own affairs academically. The college was further restructured in 1975 and a wide range of degree courses developed.