S. Haile, a distinguished English potter, ably carried on this work. Roger Hollenbeck, not long on the staff, brought a fresh point of view to the teaching of basic design. David H. Reider, formerly on the staff of the Albright School, was in 1947 made Assistant Professor of Design and given responsibility for much of the basic instruction in this subject, and the next year Philip C. Davis was appointed Instructor; he assisted in developing the courses in photography.
Sculpture was finally given its place in the curriculum of the College in 1949, when, after William Talbot, New York sculptor, briefly served as visiting lecturer, Thomas F. McClure, formerly of the University of Oklahoma, was appointed with the rank of Assistant Professor to have charge of this work. With competence both in ceramics and in sculpture, he was in a position to give unity of direction to the work of both disciplines. In 1950 and 1951, respectively, two instructors with Cranbrook backgrounds were appointed to the design staff: J. T. Abernathy was placed in charge of ceramics, and Ron Fidler was assigned the teaching of general design.
As a result of the continuing study being made of the various programs of the College, a sweeping simplification of the nonarchitectural educational pattern was arrived at, and in 1951 a description of the new visual arts program was published. This was a single curriculum suited to the various interests and professional needs of degree candidates, while at the same time providing courses for the general university student seeking some art training in the College. Within this framework all students were expected to elect during the first three semesters a common group of foundation courses in drawing and design; in the intermediate period they were allowed to choose from several groups of specific prerequisite courses those which would prepare them for the specialized fields in which they planned to concentrate during the last three semesters of the four-year program. These specialized upperclass courses, each for four credit hours and of which the student was required to elect three, were in the areas of interior design, product design, information design, ceramics, sculpture, printmaking, and oil painting. The student was to take three in a single field or might schedule a combination of them.
Indicating a direction in which the work of the College might conceivably expand were two comparatively new courses of an interdepartmental nature. Art for Beginners, taught by members of the drawing and painting staff for nonarchitectural students, was the required laboratory work for a basic survey lecture course in the fine arts given in the Literary College; and Home in the Community was a studio course in interior design taught by a member of the visual arts staff but entirely for students outside the College. Such an expansion of the work in drawing, painting, and design in response to the needs of the general university student seemed to fall in with recommendations made in a 1949 Senate Advisory Committee report on the status of women at Michigan.
With the constitution in 1946 of a Museum of Art with a director chosen from the staff of the College of Architecture and Design, a step was taken toward vitalizing and at the same time unifying the work of the various agencies of the University devoted to art teaching. The scheduling of an almost continuous series of changing exhibitions throughout the academic year and the building up of the permanent collections in the Museum of Art proved important ways of providing illustrative material for courses in the theory, history, and practice of art in the University.
It may be pointed out that the trend
