A Mirror of Curriculum. Art Libraries and Studio-Based Education: The OCAD University Experience (1876 -2016) Daniel Payne Head, Reference & Instructional Services, Dorothy H. Hoover Library, OCAD University Dorothy Haines Hoover, Glendon Hall, c.1951 (Image credit: OCAD University Archives) Contents Introduction …………………………. p. 3 Chronology …………………………. p. 5 1. The South Kensington Model (1876 – 1912) …………………………. p.13 1.1 Studios and the South Kensington Model …………………………. p.21 1.2 Libraries and the South Kensington Model …………………………. p.32 2. The Arts and Crafts Legacy (1912 – 1951) …………………………. p.39 2.1. Libraries and the Arts and Crafts Tradition …………………………. p.46 3. The Bauhaus (1951 – 1988) …………………………. p.55 3.1 Libraries and the Bauhaus …………………………. p.59 4. New Ecologies (1988 0nwards) …………………………. p.70 4.1 Libraries and the New Ecologies …………………………. p.72 Conclusion …………………………. p.84 Appendix: Detailed Chronology …………………………. p.88 Endnotes …………………………. p.99 Illustration Credits …………………………. p.114 2 Introduction On Wednesday January 17th 1849, the following notification was printed in The Globe newspaper: SCHOOL OF ART AND DESIGN The following Petition has been circulated in the City and has received a good many signatures: — To the Honorable the House of Assembly, in Provincial Parliament assembled. The humble petition of the undersigned, Working Mechanics, residing in the City of Toronto, MOST PRESPECTFULLY SHEWETH [sic], That your petitioners have viewed with much gratification the generous and no- ble grants to, and endowment of the several Literary and Scientific Institutions of the Province, for the purpose of preparing and fitting youth of our country for the different learned professions and higher stations in life, as also for the encouragement of Agricult- ural pursuits, both of which objects your petitioners are fully aware are calculated in their spheres to promote the best interests of the country, and which (largely through the fostering aid thus afforded) have attained to a high standard and reputation. Your petitioners are also fully sensible of the earnest consideration and attention that is justly given, especially by your Honorable House, to the interests of the commercial class of the community...Your petitioners, therefore, most humbly pray, that some small portion of the valuable time of your Honorable House, during the present season, may be devoted to the consideration of the advancement of their class, either by the establish- ment of a Provincial School of Art and Design, where youths intended for the various art- istical [sic] and mechanical businesses could be prepared for entering with advantage up- on their apprenticeship, by obtaining a scientific knowledge of the natural substances which they may be required to use, adoption of such other measures as to you Honorable House in its wisdom should soon meet.1 This petition was not the first appeal in Toronto calling for the establishment of a formal art and design- based school, but it is significant in demonstrating the public’s recognition of the civic need for founding such an institution. The year is significant: in 1847, educational reformer Rev. Dr. Egerton Ryerson had opened the province’s first teacher’s educational facility, known as the Normal School,2 and plans were underway in 1849 to open an accompanying school of art through a bill introduced in the Provincial Legis- lature titled the Malcolm Cameron School Act.3 Although the “provincial school of art and design” would not be established until almost thirty years later, the petition essentially records a template for what would eventually become OCAD Univer- sity, an educational institution of almost 5,000 full-time equivalent students offering a range of graduate- level programmes. The desire to combine aesthetic theory with practice; to regularize professional stand- ards in creative careers; to democratize access to art instruction; and to integrate artistic principles within science, industry, and society has, to varying degrees, remained constant throughout the school’s history. These goals were to be enacted by recognizing aesthetics, expressed through both art and design product- 3 ion, as a viable form of academic inquiry; one that is accorded the same acknowledgement as other “liter- ary and scientific” disciplines firmly ensconced in higher education. What has changed, however, is the pedagogic mode by which these ideals were conveyed; therefore, any history of informational support— visual, tactile, or textual—for these curricular goals inevitably becomes a historiography of how collect- ions, services, and mandates responded to the prevailing educational philosophies of the curriculum. References to collections of scholastic materials housed at the school are elusive until 1922 with the formal incorporation of a dedicated library space; however, a variety of primary sources help in de- coding how the curriculum was conveyed and, consequently, what supporting informational resources were used to enact learning. A combination of memoires, archival sources, and an open and detailed nine- teenth century journalistic record of Toronto’s cultural development provide a lucid view of the history of OCAD University, especially during its earliest stages. The ensuing essay is not intended to be solely a his- tory of the library at the art and design school in Toronto, but seeks to compile references on the inter- section between spaces and available research collections, then correlate these with prevailing external curricular goals and objectives. This confluence permits an understanding of how library services res- ponded to the fluctuating pedagogical standards used through time in assessing the role of “information” as a factor in the process of learning to become an artist or designer. From the founding of the school in October 1876, initially christened as the Ontario School of Art, broad periods might be identified that are shaped by prevailing international educational philosophies; ones that coincide, almost fortuitously, with significant changes at the local level in access to informational collections: . 1876 – 1922: The South Kensington Model (The Academic Tradition) . 1922 – 1951 The Arts and Crafts Legacy . 1951 – 1988: The Bauhaus . 1988 to the present: New Ecologies The focus of this study seeks to demonstrate how prevailing international art and design educational phil- osophies shaped attitudes towards the perceived informational supports needed to implement curricular outcomes and that the various transformations of the library—and administrative support thereof—have been distinctly shaped by these instructional approaches moving from the Academic tradition, through to Arts and Crafts ideals, to the full embracing of the Bauhaus pedagogical model and beyond. In evoking the “mirror” metaphor, a Lacanian reading seems inevitable. Such a didactic reference is useful in that a sense of “wholeness” and self-identity is created through interaction with one’s reflection; yet in addition, the mirrored image can be more than a direct replication of the self, serving instead as an idealized vision that represents prospective aspirations, perhaps even a romanticized picture of what the viewer hopes to be. Interestingly, comprehending the “mirror stage” in Lacanian analysis facilitates entry to more advanced phases where one achieves a “symbolic” understanding of existence.4 The library as mirror of the curr- iculum, therefore, can permit a more nuanced and emblematic understanding of aesthetics and the pro- cess of instilling these concepts through educative systems; a realization that, ideally, occurs in an equally meaningfully manner for the library and as much as for curricular administrators and instructors. 4 Chronology Although not intended as a survey of the school’s entire historical trajectory, details promoted insti- tutionally concerning the chronology of locations, names, and professional affiliations of OCAD University have been inexact. Likewise, an official history of the school has never been written, so much of the inform- ation below, especially prior to 1912, serves as primary research that has not been previously chronicled. Based on information from contemporary newspapers, personal memoires, and other ephemeral publicat- ions the following timeline might be constructed (see Appendix for detailed chronology): 1876 – 1883 Ontario School of Art . 1876 – 1883: Ontario Society of Artists Rooms, 14 King Street West.5 Founded by the Ontario Society of Artists, the curriculum is based on the “South Kensington Model” formulated at the Government School of Design in London, England (later to become the Royal College of Art). The school’s mandate is de- scribed in a contemporary Globe newspaper review: The cultivation of the aesthetical faculty is as nec- essary to the high type of civilization as intellect- ual culture, physical development, and material progress; and the love of the beautiful can only be successfully cultivated by a process of educat- ion as rigid and philosophical as that to which the Plate 1. King Street West looking west from Yonge Street, 1888; location of Ontario Society of Artists Rooms, 14 King mental faculties are subjected while under train- St. W. (Image credit: City of Toronto Archives). 6 ing. By 1882, accommodations for the school become severely constrained physically and financially, so the Minister of Educ- ation, the Hon. Adam Crooks, arranges to relocate the school to the provincial educational facility, the Toronto Normal Sch-