Art in a City Revisited

This classic text, reissued to coincide with the 800th anniversary of the City of Liverpool, was originally published in 1967. It is a milestone in the examination of urban arts movements and also provides the starting point for looking at art in Liverpool from the 1960s to the present day and beyond. Based on a survey commissioned by the Bluecoat Society of Arts, the author did something that had never before been done for a single city, and arguably has never been done since. He surveyed the history of the visual arts in the city, looked at the cultural and institutional environment in which they developed, and asked the people of Liverpool how they viewed the visual arts in Liverpool - both in terms of public art and art in enclosed spaces. Willett saw a place with strong traditions in the visual arts, with new developments associated with the city's emergence in the 1960s as a centre for music and poetry. Willett concluded with an agenda for the development of art in Liverpool, and the spirit of this imbued much of the Bluecoat's work in the decades following publication. Revised with a new introduction Art in a City is a marker for the history of the visual arts in Liverpool.

Bryan Biggs is artistic director of the Bluecoat, Liverpool’s oldest art center.  An artist in his own right, he is presently completing a project for the forthcoming Liverpool Biennial.