Althea McNish

Althea McNish (1924–2020) was an artist from Trinidad who became the first Black British textile designer to earn an international reputation.

McNish was a Fellow of the Chartered Society of Designers.

Background Early years Althea Marjorie McNish was born in Port of Spain, Trinidad, on 15th May 1924. She painted as a child, helped with her mother's dressmaking business by doing sketches, was a junior member of the Trinidad Arts Society and had her first exhibition at the age of 16. Her influences included local artists Sybil Atteck, Amy Leong Pang and Boscoe Holder, and European modernists such as Vincent van Gogh. She already had a place to study at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in Bedford Square but instead took courses at the London School of Printing and Graphic Arts, the Central School of Arts and Crafts and the Royal College of Art. Designing for such clients, McNish was the first Caribbean woman to gain recognition in this field. For the Caribbean edition of the BBC TV magazine programme Full House, produced by John La Rose and transmitted on 3 February 1973, she brought together the work of CAM visual artists as a studio setting for CAM writers, musicians and film-makers. More recently, her work — represented by three printed textiles from early in her career: Golden Harvest, Pomegranate and Fresco — was featured in the exhibition RCA Black: Past, Present & Future (31 August–6 September 2011), organised by the Royal College of Art in collaboration with the African and African-Caribbean Design Diaspora (AACDD) to celebrate art and design by African and African-Caribbean graduates.

Marriage with John Weiss In 1969 she married John Weiss, architect, jeweller and historian, and worked in partnership with him from 1971.

At the time of Weiss's death in 2018, Jake Leith, former president of the Chartered Society of Designers, said: "John and Althea were great ambassadors for the UK Fashion and Textile Design Sector." the design being based on an Essex wheatfield but using tropical colours. a dress fabric printed on silk and produced by Zika Ascher in 1959, and Gilia, a cotton furnishing fabric featuring tropical foliage in green and gold, produced by Hull Traders in 1961, are in the textile collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum. and Pineapples and pomegranates, laminated into Warerite plastic panels, a line later pursued by Perstorp Group. The 1960 modernisation of the interior of the Port of Spain General Hospital, Trinidad, by the architects Devereux and Davies, included murals by McNish.

In 1997, reviewing the exhibition Transforming the Crown: African, Asian and Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966–1996, in which McNish participated at the Studio Museum in Harlem, New York, with other CAM artists, The New York Times reported that she "produces abstract, geometric fabric designs inspired by African motifs".

In 2018 McNish was named in Architectural Digest as one of "Five Female Designers Who Changed History" (alongside Maija Isola, Norma Merrick Sklarek, Muriel Cooper, and Denise Scott Brown).

McNish featured in the 2018 BBC Four documentary film Whoever Heard of a Black Artist? Britain's Hidden Art History, in which Brenda Emmanus followed Sonia Boyce and a team she led in preparing an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery, focusing on artists of African and Asian descent who have played a part in shaping the history of British art.

Legacy In 2022, a major retrospective of her work, entitled Althea McNish: Colour is Mine, was mounted (2 April–11 September 2022) at the William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow, east London, sponsored by Liberty Fabrics. Co-curator Rosie Sinclair of Goldsmiths, University of London, observes: "Perhaps following this exhibition people will take another look at furnishings and fashion fabrics and wonder why colour became such an important part of new design taste in post-modern society and think about the individuals, a design pioneer such as Althea, who made this happen." Sinclair has also said: "She's a rare Black woman within international textile history. She broke boundaries." Coinciding with the exhibition, Liberty Fabrics reissued a capsule collection of McNish's original designs.

On 15 May 2023, coinciding with the 99th anniversary of her birth, a blue plaque was unveiled in her honour at her former home on West Green Road in Tottenham.

Selected exhibitions Solo exhibitions 1958: Althea McNish. Woodstock Gallery, London. 1982: Althea McNish. People's Gallery, London. 1997: Althea McNish. Hockney Gallery, Royal College of Art, London. 2003: Althea McNish: My World of Colour: The international work and inspirations of a Black British Trinidadian textile designer. Ohio University, Athens, USA. 2022: Althea McNish: Colour is Mine. William Morris Gallery, London. 2023: Althea McNish: Colour is Mine. University of Manchester, Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester.

Group exhibitions 1978: The Way We Live Now. Victoria & Albert Museum, London. 1981: INDIGO '81 International Exhibition. Indigo, Lille, France. 1982: Commonwealth Festival Exhibition. Brisbane, Australia. 1986: Make or Break. Henry Moore Gallery, London. 1996: Caribbean Connection 2: Island Pulse. Islington Arts Factory, London. 1997: Transforming the Crown: African, Asian & Caribbean Artists in Britain, 1966–1996. Caribbean Cultural Center, Studio Museum in Harlem, and Bronx Museum of the Arts, New York. 1997: Trinidad and Tobago Through the Eye of the Artist: From Cazabon to the New Millennium 1813–2000. Commonwealth Institute, London. Exhibition in celebration of the 35th anniversary of independence of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. 1998: Six into One: Artists from the Caribbean. Morley Gallery, London. 2007: Trade and Empire: Remembering Slavery. Whitworth Art Gallery, University of Manchester, Manchester. 2011: RCA Black. Royal College of Art, London. 2019: Get Up, Stand Up Now. Somerset House, London.

Awards and accolades 1976: Chaconia Medal (Gold), Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, "for long and meritorious service to art and design" 1988: Scarlet Ibis Award, Trinidad and Tobago High Commission, London 2006: Honorary Doctor of Fine Art, University of Trinidad and Tobago