PRESS RELEASE - NCAD appoints Professor David Crowley as Head of School of Visual Culture

The National College of Art and Design (NCAD) has, today (22.03.2017), announced that Professor David Crowley has been appointed as the Head of School of Visual Culture


Wednesday, 22nd March 2017

The National College of Art and Design (NCAD) has, today (22.03.2017), announced that Professor David Crowley has been appointed as the Head of School of Visual Culture and will assume his position on 1st July 2017.

Speaking today, Acting Director of NCAD, Bernard Hanratty, said: “Professor Crowley not only brings a strong track record of academic achievement and pedagogical development, but also a wealth of international collaborative endeavour through curation.  He will be a great asset to the College.”

David Crowley has a long-standing interest in visual culture and particularly graphic design, writing a book on the subject with Paul Jobling entitled ‘Graphic Design: Representation and Reproduction since 1800’ (1996). He is on the editorial board of Eye magazine and in summer 2016 he was invited to curate the Warsaw International Poster Biennale exhibition, The Poster Remediated.   As a curator, Crowley’s other major exhibitions include Cold War Modern at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2008–9; The Power of Fantasy: Modern and Contemporary Art from Poland at BOZAR, Brussels, 2011; Sounding the Body Electric: Experimental Art and Music in Eastern Europe at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, 2012 and Calvert 22, London, 2013.

Bernard Hanratty continued: “Professor Crowley was selected for the position of Head of School of Visual Culture from an international slate of 23 highly-qualified candidates for the post. The College was privileged to have two external representatives on its interview panel who greatly informed the final selection. The interview panel was impressed by Professor Crowley’s understanding of the needs of art, design and visual culture students, coupled with his vision of how NCAD can evolve its educational offering to meet those needs.”

“We are delighted to have David joining us. Our students, and the NCAD staff body, will greatly benefit from his vision, his passion and his commitment to research.”

Speaking of his role, Professor Crowley said: “I have long been aware of the art, design and writing produced by staff and students of NCAD. I am thrilled to be given this opportunity to work alongside them. NCAD - like all the best art and design schools - is a special place because it brims with the creative intelligence of artists and designers. It seems to me that we need this now more than ever.”

ENDS.


 

Contact: David O’Donnell, DHR Communications, Tel: 01-4200580 / 086-1081139.

Note for Editors:

About NCAD
The National College of Art and Design occupies a unique position in art and design education in Ireland. It offers the largest range of Art and Design degrees in the State at undergraduate and postgraduate level, and is the only Irish university institution specialising in Art and Design. NCAD has over 1,100 full-time students and a further 450 students who take award and non-award bearing part-time classes. Further information is available at www.ncad.ie

Follow NCAD on Twitter: @NCAD_Dublin, Instagram @ncad_dublin, or Facebook www.facebook.com/NCAD.Dublin.

About David Crowley:

David Crowley has been a Professor in the School of Humanities at the Royal College of Art, London, since 2010. He conceived and runs the Critical Writing in Art & Design programme there, an innovative MA which has supported a new generation of writers and critics.

After studying as a design historian at the University of Brighton, the Royal College of Art and the Kraków Academy of Fine Art in the 1980s, David Crowley worked as a writer, critic and curator, as well as an academic. He has a long-standing interest in visual culture and particularly graphic design, writing a book on the subject with Paul Jobling entitled Graphic Design. Representation and Reproduction since 1800 (1996). He is on the editorial board of Eye magazine and in summer 2016 he was invited to curate of the Warsaw International Poster Biennale exhibition, The Poster Remediated.

As a curator, Crowley’s other major exhibitions include Cold War Modern at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2008–9; The Power of Fantasy. Modern and Contemporary Art from Poland at BOZAR, Brussels, 2011; Sounding the Body Electric. Experimental Art and Music in Eastern Europe at Muzeum Sztuki, Łódź, 2012 and Calvert 22, London, 2013. His most recent show, Notes from the Underground. Alternative Art and Music in Eastern Europe 1968-1994, continues his interest in the intersections of music and visual art. First mounted in Łódź, Poland, in autumn 2016, the show is expected to travel to Berlin in 2018.

After living in Poland in the late 1980s, David Crowley also became a leading cultural historian of Eastern Europe under communist rule. His authored books include National Style and Nation-State. Design in Poland (1992) and Warsaw (2003) and he is the editor – with Susan Reid – of three landmark volumes: Socialism and Style. Material Culture in Post-war Eastern Europe (2000); Socialist Spaces. Sites of Everyday Life in the Eastern Bloc (2003); and Pleasures in Socialism: Leisure and Luxury in the Eastern Bloc (2010).

In the last few years David Crowley has presented his research in talks at MoMA in NYC; Yale School of Architecture; The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow; Tate Modern in London; Tropenmuseum in Leiden; The Heyman Center for the Humanities at Columbia University, NYC; The Getty in LA; ETH Zurich; the Catholic University of Santiago, Chile; the Venice Architecture Biennale; Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung in Potsdam and elsewhere.