Madam, - Katharine Crouan (Features, March 9th) suggests that the National College of Art and Design should develop "strategic ties with other like-minded organisations" as an alternative to relocating at UCD. This suggestion displays the common sense, imaginative innovation and ambition that seems to be is lacking in the board of the NCAD.
As a recent UCD graduate in art history and an emergent art practitioner I must express my outrage at the prospect of the NCAD being uprooted and replanted on the Belfield campus. While I recognise that the NCAD sorely lacks the necessary space and facilities to give its students what they need and deserve I also know that the city-centre location - and all the diversity and activity which it offers - compensates in some small way for these challenges.
A move to the comparatively sterile suburbs would not only deprive the Liberties of this hub of creative individuals, it would also serve to fortify the not entirely misconceived notion that the NCAD - like most art colleges - is an elitist institution for the middle classes.
The present situation is not only the result of a lack of financial resources and imagination. It is symptomatic of the perpetual reluctance of governments and of many Irish people to recognise the importance of visual art as a tool for self-expression and communication.
Wilde, Yeats and Joyce have had their fair share of attention, as have the colleges which they attended, and are all now firmly established as canonical Irish writers. Isn't it time we began to direct support and resources to the struggling art colleges and the overlooked art scene?
Rather than being abandoned, the current campus should be expanded. With the addition of a gallery it could become a centre for all to enjoy. The students of NCAD don't need an interdisciplinary programme - art is a valid, autonomous discipline in itself. And Dublin doesn't need more car parks, cappuccino cafés, pricey apartments or mobile phone shops. It does need enthusiastic and creative people, of all ages and backgrounds. - Yours, etc,
PADRAIC E MOORE, Monkstown, Co Dublin.
Madam, - The magisterial account by Katharine Crouan of her own college's merger with a university sets out in substance and detail the very questions in relation to the UCD proposal which as a board we would have liked to have answered but were afraid to ask.
The merger issue is quite clear and in the case of UCD/NCAD the proposal, subsequently abandoned, to merge the professorships of art history is unambiguous and a matter of record and a straw in the wind.
The co-campus idea was advanced by several members of the board including this writer but to no effect. Prof Crouan's account is a template which one hopes the new board will consider, as should the Minister with ultimate responsibility, the Minister for Education and Science. - Yours, etc,
CIARÁN MacCONIGAL Member of the board, NCAD, 2003-2006, Hill of Down, Co Meath.