The hugely-popular West Dean Fine Art Summer Show will be open to the public at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation from Saturday, July 3 to Friday, July 9, 2021 from 10am – 5pm.

With 5.6million people watching the Great British Sewing Bee – making it one of the top 10 most watched programmes in the UK, according to BARB, there’s no denying that there’s a resurgence of creative inspiration on TV.

When lockdown looked set to put a pause on external placements for MA Conservation Studies students at West Dean College of Arts and Conservation, the College benefitted from several creative solutions, enabling students to continue to gain valuable work experience. Students specialising in Ceramics and Related Materials undertook an online work placement for five weeks with The Corning Museum of Glass, New York.   

The Introduction and part of a translated text (by Edward James) of Salvador Dalí's iconic lecture at the International Surrealist Exhibition in London in July 1936, which was recently found among miscellaneous papers in the archive of West Dean College of Arts and Conservation is on display for the first time in an exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery in London. Complementing the major retrospective Eileen Agar: Angel of Anarchy, the archival exhibition Phantoms of Surrealism runs from Wednesday, May 19 to Sunday, December 12, 2021 and examines the pivotal role of women as artists, organisers, editors and animators of the Surrealist movement in Britain.  

West Dean College of Arts and Conservation has launched a new series of Professional Development courses devoted to Object and Materials Conservation; with the first, Housekeeping and Dust, taking place on Tuesday 8 June 2021.

To coincide with the half term at the end of May, West Dean Gardens, near Chichester in West Sussex have opened a wild Den area in their award-winning gardens.

West Dean College of Arts and Conservation is delighted to lend works by Cecil Beaton to the forthcoming exhibition, Cecil Beaton’s Bright Young Things which started at the Millennium Gallery, Sheffield on Thursday, May 20 and runs until Sunday, July 4 2021.

West Dean College of Arts and Conservation is delighted to announce that material from its Archives will feature in a forthcoming archival exhibition at Whitechapel Gallery in London. Phantoms of Surrealism runs from Wednesday, May 19 to Sunday, December 12, 2021, and examines the pivotal role of women in the Surrealist movement in Britain.

West Dean College of Arts and Conservation is very pleased to announce the resumption of site based training in Historic Building Conservation, following delays due to the Covid pandemic, starting with the four-day course Structural Repair of Historic Buildings from Monday, June 7 to Thursday, June 10, 2021.