“In every time period and every culture, there is this obsession and emphasis on beauty. There’s always a strong opinion on beauty, and that’s what fascinated me in the very beginning,” says Janice Li, curator at the Wellcome Trust and RCA graduate, describing her starting point when it came to curating The Cult of Beauty exhibition at the Wellcome Collection in London.
The show explores notions of beauty across time and cultures, and features more than 200 objects and artworks, such as 19th-century black silk beauty spots and a 1950s buckled maternity corset.
Curating such a wide-ranging and multifaceted exhibition takes some planning, so where did she begin with the ideas process? “I’m a historian so my process is usually to start from research questions,” says Li, a graduate of the RCA. “The starting point was realising the cognitive dissonance of what we logically know about beauty and the behaviour we take to pursue it.”
The level of obsession, and the resources people put into it, has remained quite constant through the ages, she says. “This is why the exhibition takes such a historical, cross-cultural perspective.” She also wanted to provoke a discussion about contemporary attitudes towards beauty. “I wanted to open up the conversation of what beauty means in our society today.”
Asked which item or exhibit stands out for her, Li highlights Renaissance Goo, an installation featuring five reconstructed Renaissance cosmetic products, which visitors can smell and touch. Edinburgh College of Art historian Prof Jill Burke is the principal investigator on the project, and partnered with Prof Wilson Poon, a soft-matter scientist at the University of Edinburgh, and design studio Baum & Leahy – which is run by RCA graduates Amanda Baum and Rose Leahy – to bring it to life. “It is a truly interdisciplinary project,” says Li.
Li studied history of design at the RCA – a partnership programme between the college and the V&A museum – graduating in 2018, and credits it for preparing her for her current role as a curator at the Wellcome Collection. She says she wouldn’t have had the idea for the sensory Renaissance cosmetics without her experience at the RCA.
“The training and exposure I got during my time at the RCA enabled me to have bold ideas like that, and also gave me the skills to carry the project. There was a lot about thinking about material and design beyond disciplines, working with scientists and historians and artists and designers,” she says. “It was the skills I gained at the RCA that enabled me to do this particular work.”
The RCA’s encouragement of experimentation is also described by graduates Adrian Westaway and Clara Gaggero Westaway. When they arrived on the first day of their industrial design engineering course (now innovation design engineering), they saw nothing but an empty room. Their professor told them they had £200 to spend, and that over the next few weeks they’d be building the desks that they’d be working at throughout their time at the college.
A range of experts came in to help, but students’ imaginations were the driving force. One spent all their money on sweets and installed a sweet dispenser on a cheap Ikea desk; Clara designed a minimal, futuristic workspace inspired by 2001: A Space Odyssey. “It was really putting you in at the deep end, but in a playful way,” she says. “There was a feeling of magic and experimentation.”
This feeling of adventure continued for the rest of the course and into their careers as founders of the design studio Special Projects. “All the doors were open at the RCA,” says Adrian. “You could just wander into glassblowing and then walk up to fashion and pick up some rivets or something. Everyone was there to help you.”
The pair, who have since married and had a daughter, have carried this sense of exploration into their work, designing new products for companies including Google AI, the BBC and Samsung. “We have a strong focus on humanising technology,” says Adrian. “We’re often trying to bring a human side to tech-minded companies.”
Clara studied industrial design as an undergraduate in Italy, and said the RCA course opened up a world of possibilities. “I didn’t think it was really possible to do this as a job. And I think what the RCA really instils in people is the belief that you can do what you’re born for. That’s the biggest mind shift – and you’re exposed to people who do this work.”
The RCA’s name recognition in the art and design worlds also helped Li get a foothold in her career. “I think it helped me get into interviews I wouldn’t otherwise have gotten into,” she says. “Assistant curator jobs can have thousands of applications.”
She adds that the RCA offers a unique opportunity to try different things. “Explore – and then once you find a certain direction that you keep going back to, that’s when you can be more focused and dedicated. Stay true to that gut feeling, that authenticity.”
Adrian advises tenacity in a world that can be highly competitive. “Both Clara and I didn’t actually get into the RCA the first time. A lot of people apply. We went away, I did an Open University course. We reached out to people in quite senior positions and in different design companies and they offered the time to look at my portfolio. It’s a very kind network.”
The RCA’s combination of theoretical and practical training, alongside an atmosphere that encourages an imaginative and playful approach, helps its graduates achieve amazing things.
“The course changed my life,” says Li. “The combination of training in a world-class museum [the V&A] and an art school together – I couldn’t think of a better programme.”
But it was also her peers and friends who made it special. “Those friendships really changed the way I live and changed the way I approach work. So that is quite priceless.”
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