Qualla: National College of Art and Design https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design en-us © 2026 Bendyline Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:40:12 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/national-college-of-art-and-design-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: National College of Art and Design https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design National College of Art and Design: Introduction https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design/ Photo credit Hesperian Nguyen, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1746 a young painter named Robert West rented rooms on George's Lane in Dublin and started teaching figure drawing. The Dublin Society - later the Royal Dublin Society - was impressed enough to start subsidising his students. Two hundred and eighty years later, that drawing school has not closed. It has changed names eight times, moved across the city, weathered the Act of Union, the Famine, the Easter Rising, two world wars, government closures, riotous student protests, and a 1980 relocation to an old whiskey distillery in the Liberties - but the institution that became the National College of Art and Design has trained Irish artists in an unbroken line since the year of the second Jacobite rebellion.

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/national-college-of-art-and-design-wp/gc7x-national-college-of-art-and-design-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full National College of Art and Design: The Drawing School https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design/ Photo credit DubhEire, CC BY-SA 3.0. Robert West was Master of the Figure School in those first decades; James Marrin ran the Landscape and Ornamental School; Thomas Ivory later headed the Architectural School. Throughout the eighteenth century the school had a status almost unique in the British Isles - it was the ...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/national-college-of-art-and-design-wp/gc7x-national-college-of-art-and-design-the-drawing-school.mp3 0:06 2 full National College of Art and Design: London Takes Over https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design/ Photo credit DubhEire, CC0. After the 1800 Act of Union, the school's funding shifted from the Dublin Parliament to Westminster. In 1849 the Board of Trade in London took direct control of the school as a school of industrial design. In 1854 it passed to the new Department of Science and Art at South Kensin...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/national-college-of-art-and-design-wp/gc7x-national-college-of-art-and-design-london-takes-over.mp3 0:06 3 full National College of Art and Design: Becoming National https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design/ Photo credit Twilson r, CC BY-SA 4.0. In 1924 the Department of Education of the new independent Irish state took over the Metropolitan School. In 1936 it was renamed the National College of Art, with professorships of Design, Painting and Sculpture; weaving and ceramics were added later. By the 1960s the institution...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/national-college-of-art-and-design-wp/gc7x-national-college-of-art-and-design-becoming-national.mp3 0:06 4 full National College of Art and Design: The Distillery on Thomas Street https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design/ Photo credit MikeBarry1989, CC BY-SA 4.0. The Dail next door at Leinster House needed more space. The college needed more space. In 1980 the College purchased the old Powers Distillery premises at 100 Thomas Street in the Liberties - a six-acre nineteenth-century industrial complex of stone warehouses, vat-houses, and en...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/national-college-of-art-and-design-wp/gc7x-national-college-of-art-and-design-the-distillery-on-thomas-street.mp3 0:06 5 full National College of Art and Design: Next Door to Pugin https://qualla.com/national-college-of-art-and-design/ Photo credit Alyssa.yeng, CC BY-SA 4.0. The campus stands immediately next to the Church of St Augustine and St John on Thomas Street - the great Gothic Revival church begun in 1862 by Edward Welby Pugin (son of the more famous A. W. N. Pugin of the Houses of Parliament). Inside the church, fittingly, are stained-glass...

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]]> Sat, 23 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/g/c/7/x/national-college-of-art-and-design-wp/gc7x-national-college-of-art-and-design-next-door-to-pugin.mp3 0:06 6 full