REGENCY EXHIBITION 1949

Regency Brighton, a travelling exhibition of some 70 framed photographs of Regency architecture was assembled by the Society in 1949 at a cost of £109.
It was hoped that some of the cost would be recouped by a hire fee of one guinea (twenty one shillings) per week, and by the sale of catalogues.
After being shown in Brighton in November and December, the exhibition went on its travels, covering much of England in 1950 and 1951. It briefly strayed over the border to visit Glasgow in 1951. In 1952 the exhibition was shown in various towns in France, staying longest in Biarritz where it was shown for five weeks.

In 1953 the exhibition transferred to the USA where it was shown at a number of learned institutions including the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum.It then went on to Canada.When it returned to this country is uncertain, but it was on display at the Royal Pavilion during 1956

The original 70 exhibition photographs are shown, together with the accompaning text, here

One of the seventy framed photographs in the exhibition

The Regency was the last great period of English architecture before apparently natural good taste gave place to the artistic ineptitude which transformed so many of the towns of England into vast wildernesses of gloom in the Victorian period. The fine examples of architecture from the Regency period and its immediately succeeding years which have survived in Brighton are, if considered at the national level, part of the architectural heritage of England, and if considered in the local sphere, the most important asset which the town possesses. The Regency Society of Brighton and Hove, which came into existence in 1945, in order to try and safeguard the best buildings of both towns from disfigurement or destruction, is sponsoring this exhibition with the aim of making these elegant stuccoed squares and terraces and the other buildings of note in Brighton and Hove, better known and appreciated beyond their borders.

The catalogue ends with these words ...