Henry R. Hope

From 'Freehand' to Hope: a 100th anniversary sketch of Fine Arts

By Rose McIlveen

Fine arts was added to the curriculum on the IUB campus just before the turn of the century. Not that the faculty and students were boors. There simply were many other subjects considered more important than catering to the aesthetic side of human nature.

The Department of Freehand and Technical Drawing was established in 1895 and the following year, art instruction was launched by its first faculty member, Alfred Mansfield Brooks. After receiving his bachelor of arts degree from Harvard University in 1894, he moved over to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to study architecture for a year. Harvard gave him a master of arts degree in 1899.

Brooks may not have been a gifted painter or sculptor, but he launched into the teaching of "Principles of delineation, color and Chiaroscuro and the history of painting;" "Drawing‹elementary practive in drawing and the use of water colors;" and "Architecture‹technical and historical development of the ancient styles, with special reference to classic architecture."

While students were learning the differences between Doric, Ionic and Corinthian columns, they had the opportunity to study works of art owned by the university. In his book, Indiana University 1820-1904, Samuel B. Harding (who taught European history) explained that during the university's relatively young life, someone had been thinking about aesthetics.

Harding wrote that some of the art works owned by the university were "a fine early drawing by J.M Turner; two drawings, one of them a water color by Samuel Prout; a typical piece of color drawing by the English artist William Hunt; two drawings, one very characteristic, by John Ruskin; together with others by living artists of repute."

The collection, Harding wrote, "contained wood and metal engravings and etchings by Albert Durer, Marc Antonio Raimondo, Hollar, Richard Earlom, Prout, Harding and John Lewis, Hogarth and many others."

In Harding's history, there are two photographic views of the fine arts lecture and drawing room. The room appears to have served as a museum as well, since art works are hanging on the wall and on display in glass cases. A scaled-down plaster copy of Winged Victory was perched on a bracket overlooking the seating.

Since its beginning as primarily an art education curriculum, fine arts curriculum at IUB has flourished under the direction of directors dedicated to its success.

In the 1920s, the department's status rose under the direction of chairman Robert E. Burke and IU's president, William Lowe Bryan. The university first graduated students with a fine arts major in 1921.

In 1941, the department entered an era of expansion. IU president Herman B Wells brought in a new chairman, Henry Radford Hope. That year the department offered its first master of fine arts degree, in conjunction with the John Herron Art Institute in Indianapolis, and the Fine Arts Gallery held its first exhibition.

By the mid-1950s, the department, its faculty and art collection had grown by leaps and bounds, and a new Fine Arts Building was built in 1962 adjacent to Showalter Fountain. In 1975, the Art Museum separated from the department, although the museum continued its original mission as a teaching museum.

In 1982, the Art Museum and the Fine Arts Library moved to its present building, designed by I.M. Pei, adjacent to the Fine Arts Building.

In 1981, the department changed its name to the School of Fine Arts and in 1990, it became the Henry Radford Hope School of Fine Arts, to honor its influential chairman.

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