“…At the National College of Arts (NCA),
we imagine a world. Not one world,
but many. One for each of us, one from
each of us, with these we write the
autobiographies of our times, in objects, in
lines, in mortar, and in perishable clay. In
tracing ourselves, we leave traces. These
are the traces that make our cities. Turn
us inside out like pillowcases with that
remembered smell, like shed skins. These
are the traces that populate our nights,
and from these traces we dare to dream
again…”
Excerpts from NCA teacher - students conversations.
The NCA offers a number of professional
undergraduate and graduate degree courses.
Courses have been conceived in such a way in which
the student’s unique creative and internal impetus
is aligned with the requirements of the job market
in an increasingly diverse world. Tradition and
individual talent both form an integral part of the
history for a more meaningful participation in the
future. Freedom, plurality and an interdisciplinary
approach allows ideas, histories, theoretical
positions and technical procedures to be located
within a critical space. The diversity of both the
faculty and the student body ensures that no
particular ideological or theoretical position is
sacrosanct. Discussion, critique and research form
the backbone of all the courses offered. We are
unique as we draw both our faculty and our student
body from a diverse cultural mix. This facilitates
and allows a pluralistic culture within the College.
Students benefit from exposure to a wide range of ideas, sub-cultural identities and practice drawn
from often conflicting and contested geographical,
socio-political and historical locales.
The visual is a language that must be learnt. The
knowledge of technique and medium forms the
basis of personal expression, and that innovation
comes through understanding and learning of
visual language. We believe that creative expression
has the power to change the world. An artist is a
philosopher, linguist, idealist, writer, critic, theorist
and above all human at the same time.
Our students have made their mark and moved on
to become pioneering professionals in a number
of creative fields both locally and internationally.
Professor Mark Ritter Sponenburgh, the first
Principal of NCA, introduced the modern art college
curriculum, in 1958. The modern movement in
Pakistani art had already begun with Professor
Shakir Ali, teacher and Principal at the NCA. The
students of Professor Mark Ritter Sponenburgh
at the NCA, spearheaded modern art education in
Pakistan.
The Renaissance man Bhai Ram Singh; alumnus,
faculty and principal at the Mayo School, was an
architect, designer, and craftsman who in one short,
inimitable lifetime discovered in himself, both a
builder and a wood carver. Aitchison College, the
Lahore Museum and the NCA itself bear testimony
to his greatness.
The history of the NCA is bound up with the
incredible legacy of personalities that have emerged
from it. Nayyar Ali Dada’s eclectic expression
bears much of Pakistan’s creative expression in architecture; Professor Emeritus Khalid Iqbal gave
us the sensitive soul of the Punjab in painting;
Zahoor ul Akhlaq the reflective artist, left behind
an imperishable legacy; Mian Ejaz ul Hassan
the painter and Mian Salahuddin the ceramist
paved the way for exploring new avenue in their
respective disciplines. Nayyara Noor, whose music
and voice has touched the hearts of generations;
Graphic Designers Niaz Ali Shah and Ahmad Khan
established the technical, perceptual, theoretical
peripheries of publicity and graphic design and
what is now called Visual Communication Design.
Professors and artists the likes of Professors Salima
Hashmi, Colin David, Saeed Akhtar and Muhammad
Asif trained entire generations that studied at the
NCA. Such has been the contribution of others, such
as Professors Kamil Khan Mumtaz, Javed Najam,
Tanveer Hussain, Abdul Rehman Khan, Shehrazad
Alam and Bashir Ahmed who are all pioneers in
their fields. The Textile Design Department was
established under the leadership of Professor
Abbassi Abidi, who later on became the Principal
of the NCA. The product designer Professor Qadir
Bakhsh, the founding father of the department of
Product Design established a venerable reputation
nationally and internationally; as did Ustad
Mohamed Ali with his fine woodcarvings. Shirin
Pasha, the film-maker with the sensibility of a
painter who founded the department of Film and
TV; Professor Iqbal Hassan the eternal academic
who took charge of teaching art history and headed
the department that can rightly be called the
intellectual backbone of studio programmes offered
at the NCA.
Amongst NCA’s many contributions is the
contemporary miniature painting movement,
headed by Professor Bashir Ahmed.
The first Musicology and Film and Television degree
programmes offered in Pakistan were initiated at
the NCA in 2002 and 2004 respectively. Apart from
the establishment of pioneering departments,
the NCA, its faculty and students have been
advocates and participants of pivotal heritage and
conservation projects, such as the conservation of
the Lahore Fort.
The NCA library and archives section houses original
documents spanning over a hundred years, as well
as a continuously updated bank of contemporary
publications; this makes it one of the best visual art
research libraries in South Asia. The environment
at the NCA is professional, creative and research
oriented, and has over the years, attracted a
number of professionals and educationists of calibre
from all over the world, who have come to this
institution for teaching and learning. All of our
faculty members are practitioners in their fields.
We believe that the cutting edge of creativity and
expression is to be discovered within ourselves
and for that we individually nurture the potential
in each student. We teach our students to reject
nothing, to examine everything; they are taught
how to think but never what to think. In this
lies freedom, ours and theirs. Expression is to
be discovered within ourselves and for that we
individually nurture the potential in each student.
Sir JJ School of Arts, Bombay, Govt. College of Art,
Madras, Govt. College of Art and Craft, Calcutta and
the Mayo School of Arts, Lahore were the four art
institutions established by the Crown in India. The
Mayo School of Industrial Art was set up in memory
of the assassinated British Viceroy of India, Lord
Mayo. John Lockwood Kipling (father of author
Rudyard Kipling), a teacher of painting, sculpture
and architectural embellishment and proponent
of the Arts and Crafts Movement working then at
the J.J. School of Art Bombay, was appointed as
the Mayo School of Art’s first Principal. He also
held charge as the curator of the Central Museum
Lahore.
The Mayo School of Art was established in 1875 on
the lines of the Kensington model, in conjunction
with the Central Museum. The School was to
document the arts and crafts of the Punjab, with
the aim of training excellent craftsmen who would
serve the demands of craft production. The Mayo
School became a centre of craft excellence under
the direction of a line of accomplished heads,
including J.L Kipling, Sir Percy Brown, Lionel
Heath, Bhai Ram Singh and S. N. Gupta. The school
was also tasked with the monitoring of craft
institutions of the Punjab and in such capacity, was
well connected with other institutions throughout
the province. Over the years, inclusion of the
fine arts became part of the school’s curriculum,
along with architectural drafting and drawing,
embellishment crafts, woodwork, wood carving,
weaving, embroidery, blacksmith, metalwork and
bookbinding.
Following the partition of the Indian Subcontinent,
the Mayo School underwent many changes. From
1956 to 1958 the Mayo School went through a
process of restructuring by the Government of
Pakistan to become the National College of Arts.
Professor Mark Ritter Sponenburg (1916-2012), a
graduate of the prestigious Cranbrook Academy
of Art, Michigan, and the L’ Ecole des Beaux Arts
Paris, was given charge as Principal. A celebrated
artist well versed in American and European art
and design education, Sponenburgh introduced
the modernised curriculum which is the root of
today’s National College of Arts. He encouraged an
understanding and exploration of indigenous craft
and culture. The exhibition ‘Folk Arts of Swat’ based
on research in Swat, in collaboration with NCA
students, is still on display at the Lahore Museum.
The departments of Fine Arts, Design and
Architecture were established in 1958 and the Mayo
School was finally transferred to the Ministry of
Education. The College was sanctioned a Board of
Governors as recognition of its superior quality
of education. The new breed of artists, designers
and architects filled many professional voids. A
new policy introduced in 1972 recognized the
achievements of the College and further planned
its development as a centre of excellence in the arts.
A unique measure of autonomy, under the Federal
Government, was ensured from this point on. In
1985 the College was granted a degree awarding
status. This also empowered the NCA to institute
graduate programmes in the field of Visual Arts and
Interior Design (1999), Multimedia Arts (2001) and Communication and Cultural Studies (2005). The
College offers MA degrees in Visual Art, Interior
Design and Multimedia Design and an MPhil
leading to PhD in Communication and Cultural
Studies. The departments of Musicology, Film &
Television were established in a few years later,
along with the Centre for Conservation and Cultural
Heritage Management.
The Research and Publication Centre was
established in 1999, and has produced milestone
publications on history, art, and the social sciences.
A project for the restoration and conservation of
the archival records of Mayo School of Arts was
also initiated in 1999. Today the NCA Archives is
considered an essential resource for research on
art history and the history of art, craft, design and
architecture of Pakistan and pre- partition Punjab.
The National College of Arts successfully
transitioned from Annual System to Semester
System in 2020 with all Degree Programme courses
and structures approved from the Academic
Committee of the Board of Governors NCA. Now in
2021, NCA has achieved another milestone of being
a Federal Chartered Institute which has elevated
its status as a unique institution in the field of Art
and Design. It is indeed a moment of pride for the
National College of Arts that it has gained the status
of a chartered institute which certainly expanded
its outreach and also the infrastructure that is an
achievement in itself. We hope that the coming year
brings more seminal prospects to fruition taking
NCA to new heights for the times to come.
The Mayo School of
Art was established
in 1875, with the
intention of having
a centre that served
the demands of the
local and British peers
and the government,
by preserving and
patronizing the craft of
Punjab.
The foundation stone of the Kipling Block (now the
Administration block) was laid on January 3,1880 by
Prince Albert Victor, and presents an early example
of the utilization of Mughal imagery. Referred to
as ‘late Mughal’ style in contemporary accounts, its
construction was supervised by a famous engineer
from Lahore, Khan Bahadur Ganga Ram, who later
became well known for his philanthropy. Initially,
the building consisted of six rooms. Temporary
additions were made to it in 1881. In 1891, these
temporary structures were made permanent in
accordance with a design prepared by the Principal.
Now the school had proper workshops equipped
with tools and machines. In 1902 four large machine
workshops and photolithography studio were
already functioning. The fountain in the front of
the main entrance was designed by Sirdar Bahadur
Bhai Ram Singh, much admired as a designer and
craftsman when selected to decorate a section of
Queen Victoria’s Osborne House. Kipling utilized
his crafts and sculpture background to construct
a comparatively simple but elegantly detailed
structure. The beautifully laid brick masonry of the
walls ends at the roof with an outer cornice of red
sand- stone, which, historian Latif informs, had been
obtained from Delhi.
NCA is ideally located in the heart of the cultural
capital and enjoys a historically rich neighbourhood.
The College is flanked on either side by the Lahore
Museum and the Town Hall respectively, with the
Punjab University Old Campus across the road. The
lure of the city for students is not just limited to the
magic of history and the world heritage sites. The
area between the Badshahi Mosque and the NCA is
a treasure trove of materials, from the traditional
to the contemporary. This is a city where people
make things on site and a living is made from ideas;
from metalwork and plastics to print workshops
and digital art. This is an extraordinary space for
research, collaboration and innovation, one that is
utilized by NCA students as a home away from home
from the first day of their entry into the College.
Not far away is Royal Park, the iconic cinema district
where the Pakistani film industry lived and worked
in an atmosphere of its own creation. Cinema
hoardings with their unique style were painted and
repainted in its narrow lanes.
Recently Lahore has begun to reclaim its place in
South Asia as a cultural and intellectual hub. The
city is host to theatre shows, art exhibitions, music
festivals, symposia and lectures all year round, with
local and international participation, all of which
are accessible to the students of the NCA.
What is unique about studying at the NCA is that
students are not merely observers in the drama of
a city. Students of the NCA take their performances
into the public sphere, in its streets, galleries and
work in its industries.
The Rawalpindi campus was set up in the historic,
Liaquat Memorial Hall in January 2006. The iconic
Liaquat Hall was designed by the Greek Architect,
Doxiadis. This multilevel building lies in the heart
of Rawalpindi city. It has a long thriving history of
performing arts. The Rawalpindi/Islamabad area
has an active body of professionals, many of whom
are NCA alumnus, as well as other bodies who have
been working towards the setting up of professional
art schools. Their resources are utilized in addition
to the inputs that the current NCA faculty provides.
The project is a turning point in the history of the
NCA. Bearing in view the ethos and model of the
NCA, an academic plan has been developed to
ensure continuity in the integrated teaching of
the visual arts through the combined foundation
course.
To encourage cultural diversity and gender parity
in the student body, the Rawalpindi Campus
admits students countrywide, following the same
procedure of testing and criterion of eligibility as
already established at the NCA.
The campus has a visiting faculty hostel, equipment
for studios and laboratories, academic buildings
and a library. The faculty, in keeping with the NCA
model, comprises of a core permanent faculty, as
well as visiting, guest and contract faculty, both
national and international.
It is the student body that truly makes the NCA
distinctive. Our students come from all parts of the
country and from extremely diverse socio-economic
backgrounds. The variety of backgrounds, identities,
ideological positions and languages become our
strength.
The diversity of our student body engenders a
unique NCA culture where debate and discourse are
promoted. This promotes creativity, understanding,
individuality and tolerance. Our foreign students
are easily absorbed into the College stream.
The Ministry of Federal Education has allocated
an auditorium space in Islamabad with the aim
of making our local art and culture accessible
to a larger audience. The initiative has proven
especially beneficial in the exchange of art and
ideas, perpetuating a soft image of Pakistan
internationally.
The National College of Arts holds art exhibitions,
cultural symposia and conferences, as well as
NCA productions, documentaries and films at the
auditorium.
A space in the capital city, dedicated to artistic
endeavours has increased access for foreign
missions to view art and engage in artistic activities.
The National College of Arts also offers short
courses on various traditional and contemporary
arts for the international missions in Islamabad and
for the public at large.
It is hoped that the activities will not only help us
advance our academic linkages internationally but
will also help us draw international exhibitions
and artistic activity to Pakistan. It will thus foster
the promotion of culture, retaining the diversity
and plurality of a number of artistic genres. The
Initiative will significantly improve the ways in
which audiences can connect with local as well as
international arts.
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Design: Baber Baig - Development: Qasim Naeem
