"This is the first comprehensive historical study of Ireland's oldest art institution. The National College of Art and Design, the largest of its kind in the country, can trace its origins in an unbroken line back to the Dublin Society Drawing Schools of 1746. The institution has been influenced in turn by the French Enlightenment, the Victorian schools of design, the Arts and Crafts Movement, the search for Irish national identity and the innovations in British art education of the 1960s." "The school has played its part in Irish social and cultural developments. It had a significant influence on the emergence of the eighteenth-century Irish school of painting and sculpture. It also effected the high 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 teachers have included Sir William Orpen, Oliver Sheppard, Oswald Reeves, Harry Clarke, Sean Keating, Maurice MacGonigal, Laurence Campbell and Bernardus Romein." "The major 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. The controversy became a continuing news story in the media and a source of friction in parliament. Central to this was the debate about Modernism versus traditional discipline and the control exercised by the Department of Education. There was also the pressure for industrial design reform in face of the new economic future of Ireland in the Common Market. The consequence of this revolution was a statute in 1971 which re-established the college, granting it freedom to run its own affairs academically. The college was completely restructured in 1975 and a wide range of degree courses developed."--BOOK JACKET.