Today was the first day of a two-day conference to mark/celebrate/explore the changes in the writing and study of the history of design since the establishment of the V&A/RCA MA Course in the History of Design in October 1982. The conference is called History of Design: Change over Time/Time for Change.

Paradoxically, the image which appeared on the screen in between papers was dated October 1984 (see above), perhaps taken from the first set of public seminars which started with one given by Jules Prown, who was referred to in the first paper as a key figure in the field of Material Culture.

Jeremy Aynsley gave a brilliant overview of the history of the subject, but also showed a picture of the 1984 student brochure, not the original one, which had been compiled at speed for the launch of the course in 1982.  It would be interesting to compare the two.  The 1982 version of the course was called ‘Design and Decorative Arts: History and Technique’, which institutionalised an adversarial relationship between the V&A and RCA and was abolished in 1984.

Having not kept in touch with the development of the subject since I left the V&A in 1994, two things struck me.

The first was the extent to which the course fertilised the V&A’s exhibition programme between 2000 and 2010 when Mark Jones was Director with a whole series of big ambitious survey exhibitions, including Paul Greenhalgh on Art Nouveau and Christopher Wilk on Modernism.

The second was the amazing and impressive diversification and internationalisation of the subject such that it now encompasses absolutely everything. I particularly liked the suggestion in three papers that it should be about touch, sound (the sound of a typewriter) and smell. Presumably taste as well.