Training for art-related employment: Community support for Halifax’s Art School, 1887-1943

The most surprising outcome from the Victoria School of Art and Design's first half century is that it survived into its second. How it survived, and how it almost failed to, is the subject of this thesis. The main argument is that community support for the VSAD, or lack of it, was based more on pragmatic concerns, rather than on whether people liked the art being produced. Among those concerns, the most talked about was art training for employable skills. Led by Anna Leonowens, who later became the subject of the musical The King and I, well-to-do citizens in Halifax, Nova Scotia founded the VSAD in 1887. In 1925 the school changed its name to the Nova Scotia College of Art. Its current name, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, came in 1969, the year that the College became what was then the only autonomous degree granting art institution in Canada. As part of an international movement, the VSAD shared its late nineteenth century origins with similar art schools throughout North America, Europe, Britain and its colonies. Many of these schools also shared common purposes: to sharpen the graphic skills of industrial designers, to provide instruction in the fine and decorative arts, and to train drawing teachers for public and private schools. Of the different groups supporting the Halifax school, women and their organizations were the most consistent and consequential, especially Halifax's Local Council of Women. A properly funded art school, they argued, could generate jobs, stimulate economic gains, and foster higher standards of civic culture within the community. This study looks at the VSAD's supporters, teachers, and administrators during its first half century. It describes how the school, with its inadequate enrolment, budget, and space, played a limited role in generating art-related employment before the Great War. It is only with the principalship of Elizabeth Styring Nutt from 1919 to 1943, with her strong community connections and decades-long commitment to training artist-workers, that the school finally gained relative security and success.Education, Faculty ofGraduat