New Acquisitions
New acquisitions Within the last nine months there have been five new donations to the BIAD School of Art Archive. The first of these were two Birmingham School of Art dance programmes from the early 1880s - a gift that led to the suggestion that perhaps these school balls might be revived! More mysteriously, Library Services were sent two nineteenth-century volumes that had originally belonged to the School of Art anonymously through the post. One of these was a book of press-cuttings from the early 1870s; the other was a collection of annual reports on the work of the School of Art from the early 1860s to 1878. Another donor found a memorial medal of John Henry Chamberlain, the architect of the School of Art, buried in his back garden in Kent and generously sent it on to us.
Last July almost one hundred drawings and paintings by Hilda Mary Long, a student at the School of Art between 1917 and 1923, were donated to the Archives by her great niece. We were especially pleased to receive these because this period is currently underrepresented in our collection. Moreover, they are high quality works in very good condition. We hope to exhibit a sample of them in the Print Corridor at Margaret Street in April.
Our final donation was of artworks by students who had been taught by B.P. Arnold, a lecturer at the School from the 1930s up until the early 1970s. Initially, he was appointed to teach drawing, but latterly he specialised in photography and industrial design. Among the works donated by his daughter were a number of architectural drawings and monotone perspective studies, some of which we hope to exhibit at a later date. The donation also includes several of B.P. Arnold's own notebooks, which are filled with lesson plans and ideas for a book on the Golden Section.