The North-East Can Make It: Post-war Design Exhibitions at the Laing Art Gallery (Newcastle)

In 1945, CB Stevenson, curator of the Laing Art Gallery (Newcastle-upon-Tyne, UK), predicted a crisis in the local economy in connection with the changes that the city’s industries underwent during the Second World War. He felt that the Laing could provide creative solutions to the crisis by ‘drawing attention to the importance of good design and craftsmanship in our manufactures’ and by showing ‘the widespread application of art to things of everyday life’.1 Between 1945 and the curator’s death in 1957, the Laing held over twenty design-related exhibitions intended to illustrate the connection between art and industry and to share ‘what the North could make’, following the path opened by the exhibition Britain Can Make it, held in London in 1946.2 This article brings attention to the Laing’s commitment to exhibit transnational and local crafts, graphic arts and industrial design and to support North-Eastern industries within the challenging post-war context. This narrative counteracts the dominant London-based history of British design by offering a case study that evidences the role played by regional art galleries in the promotion of modern design.