Abstract

'A War of Taste': The London County Council as Art Patron 1948-1965 MARGARET GARLAKE Compared with certain other cities in Europe not a tenth the size of London, this capital is still, in the matter of public patronage of the arts, a staunch citadel of philistinism.1 One major fact has become increasingly obvious: the metropolitan area has sites almost without parallel in the world, for the display of one form of art or another. 2 The LCC's Approach to Art in Reconstruction etween 1948 and 1963 the London County Council organised a series of triennial sculpture exhibitions in Battersea and Holland Parks and, from 1956 until its abolition in 1965, an acquisition programme to provide works of art for its housing estates, schools and other properties.3 While the two enterprises were separate in planning and function, they give complementary insights into attitudes to state and institutional patronage, to the receiving public and to theoretical formulations of 'public art', which were important issues for artists, critics and public alike in the early postwar period. These events also represent an aspect of London's past that has been bypassed by art historian4 and is now literally disappearing, with the deterioration of many