Announcing the Slade Archive History Project

Treasures in the Slade School of Fine Art Archive, waiting to be looked at... 

A few months ago I was invited to the Slade School of Fine Art at UCL, by the Head of Department, Professor Susan Collins, to have a poke about in their archive and a chat about what to do with it.  Since 1871 the Slade School of Fine Art has educated and trained generations of world-renowned artists, from Gwen and Augustus John, Stanley Spencer and Ben Nicholson around the turn of the 20^th century and early 1900’s, to Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi in the 1940’s, through to Derek Jarman, Paula Rego, Euan Uglow and Craigie Aitchison in the 50’s and 60’s. More recent Turner Prize winning alumni include Martin Creed, Rachel Whiteread, Antony Gormley and Douglas Gordon. The Slade has an extensive archive on site which includes objects, papers, photographs, class lists, student records and artefacts dating throughout its history at UCL, which contains rich evidence of the time artists spent at the Slade. However, this archive is difficult to access, and no attempt has been made to present this rich information to a wider audience.

Until now. I'm really pleased to announce that UCLDH have received a UCL Small Research Grant to work with the Slade to undertake a pilot project with the Slade Archive - to see what is there, and how it can be exploited and used. One of the things we are going to do is dig up old class photographs, and try to identify people in them. We're also going to be rummaging... and digitising... and plotting... and scheming... and posting things online... and...

The project starts in October, for only a few months, but I'm really looking forward to being involved. Dave Beavan, the UCLDH Research Manager, will also be on the case. You'll hear more about this in the autumn!