Centenary Twins

“On one hand,the British government wanted to establish an institutionwhere the wards of the Christian and Anglo-Indian population in Lucknow could get some technical education and on the other hand,long before MahatmaGandhi launched the ‘swadesi’ and be-Indian-buy-Indian’ movement,a British thinker Sir John Birdwood said: ‘Indian native gentlemen and ladies shouldmake it a point of culture never to wear any clothes or ornaments but of native manufacture’. A need was felt to develop the arts of the region,such as glass-blowing,through formal training,” he adds.

On November 1,1892,School of Industrial Design was established in Wingfield Manzil,the present-day Banarsi Bagh or the Lucknow ZoologicalGardens. It shifted to Aminabad and later to Baans Mandi,till finally,Public Works Department was assigned the job of building permanent premises for the institution and the foundation was laid in 1909-1910. In1911,the building was ready and from the stage of its inauguration in 1911 to the beginning of session it kept being referred to as School of Design,School of Art,or School of Industrial Design,till finally,in 1917 it was given the name Government College School of Arts and Crafts.

The first principal of the college was Nathaniel Heard and among the passouts in the first batch in 1917 was the topper LM Sen,who was immediately appointed as teacher and founder of DFR (Commercial Art) course in 1918. Later in 1923 he was awarded scholership to go for study at Royal College of Art,London ,where he did so well that he was decorated with an Award of RCA.

He was deputed to oversee the design and arrangements in India House,the HighCommission of India in England. He was even appointed associate in London’s Royal College of Art and having exhibited his work there,he came back to the Lucknow Arts College School to teach. But soon he was commissioned along with other three artists to go to London once again to decorate India House with murals.

Other luminaries of the college includeVishwanath Mukherjee,Frank Wesley (see pics),BN Jijja and Sukhbir Singh Singhal.

Arts College,Lucknow pioneered the Master in Visual Artcourse. Bhupesh Chandra Little,who heads the department has visited several universities of the country on invitation to establish the department there too.

“As many as 28 passouts of the commercial art department have picked up international awards and are doing well in various metros of the country as well as abroad,” says Bhupesh,who passed out of the college and joined as a teacher of photography,and is also Dean StudentWelfare.

“We have presented proposals for several new programmes to the Universities Grant Commission and the Lalit Kala Akademi and to mark the centenary,we are holding a number of national and internationalworkshops,” says Rajiv Nayan Pandey,Principal of the college and sculptor of national stature.