Slade School of Fine Art

Encyclopedia

The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. The school is organised as a department of UCL’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities.

History

Students at the Slade in 1905

The school traces its roots back to 1868 when lawyer and philanthropist Felix Slade (1788–1868) bequeathed funds to establish three Chairs in Fine Art, to be based at Oxford University, Cambridge University and University College London, where six studentships were endowed.

Distinguished past teachers include Henry Tonks, Wilson Steer, Randolph Schwabe, William Coldstream, Andrew Forge, Lucian Freud, Phyllida Barlow, John Hilliard, Bruce McLean, Alfred Gerrard. Edward Allington was Professor of Fine Art and Head of Graduate Sculpture until his death in 2017.

Two of its most important periods were immediately before, and immediately after, the turn of the twentieth century, described by Henry Tonks as its two ‘crises of brilliance’. The first included the students Augustus John, William Orpen and Percy Wyndham Lewis; the second – which has been chronicled in David Boyd Haycock’s A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War (Old Street Publishing, 2009) – included the students Dora Carrington, Mark Gertler, Paul Nash, C.R.W. Nevinson and Stanley Spencer.

Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art

The Slade Centre for Electronic Media in Fine Art (SCEMFA) was opened in 1995. The centre provides opportunities for research into electronic media and fine art with the goal of contributing to debate on national and international levels. The Slade had previously been home to Malcolm Hughes’s Computer and Experimental Department in the 1970s.

In 1997 SCEMFA presented Collision, a public lecture series by artists, writers, and curators working with interactivity, telematics, and digital works. This exhibition was followed by Spontaneous Reaction, a week-long seminar funded by the Arts Council of England, which took a critical look at interactivity with participants from a variety of disciplines, including psychology, architecture, and computer science.

Throughout 1998, SCEMFA collaborated with Channel 4 UK to organise Cached, a monthly event held at the Institute of Contemporary Arts, London. Funded by the Arts Council, this series investigated the conceptual and practical issues of producing art for the internet through a series of artists presentations.

Art collection

The Slade art collection was started when the yearly prizes awarded to top students was combined with a collection scheme in 1897 and the Summer Composition Prize and the Figure and Head Painting Prizes began to be kept by the school. Works by students and staff of the Slade School of Fine Art form the basis of the UCL Art museum today.

Rankings

In a 2008 survey conducted by The Sunday Times the Slade recorded perfect scores.

Faculty rankings
2010
The Guardian University Guide 1st
The Complete University Guide 2nd
The Times Good University Guide 2nd

Teaching

The faculty currently offers the following programs:

Undergraduate studies

  • 3-year BFA in Fine Art
  • 4-year BA in Fine Art

Graduate studies

  • 2-academic year (18 months) MFA in Fine Art
  • 2-calendar (24 months) MA in Fine Art
  • 1-term, 2-term, of 1-year Graduate Affiliate Study

Research

  • MPhil or PhD in Fine Art

Notable alumni

Full list see Category:Alumni of the Slade School of Art