Introducing the Slade Archive Project

A research project between the Slade School of Fine Art and UCL Centre for Digital Humanities centred on exploring and developing the Slade Archive.

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 20th century and early 1900s, to William Coldstream, Richard Hamilton and Eduardo Paolozzi in the 1930s and 40s, through to Derek Jarman, Paula Rego, Euan Uglow and Craigie Aitchison in the 50s and 60s. 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. Together with materials held in UCL Special Collections and UCL Art Museum, the archive collection contains rich evidence of the time artists spent at the Slade. Much of this archive, however, is difficult to access, and the Archive Project is aimed at exploring ways of presenting this information to a wider audience.

UCL’s Centre for Digital Humanities has received a UCL Arts & Humanities Small Research Grant to work with the Slade to undertake a pilot project on the Slade Archive – to start mapping and activating this invaluable resource. Over the months to come we will explore ways in which this underused resource can be made more accessible and generate new knowledge – through new research, online resources, public events and publications. The project will trial various online platforms and tools to help unearth, track and bridge together the varied histories of the School, its former staff and students, and chart their impact in the art world – both nationally and internationally. For more information contact:
Liz Bruchet, Slade Archive Project Research Assistant slade.enquiries@ucl.ac.uk
UCL Centre for Digital Humanities
UCL Special Collections
UCL Art Museum
A partial timeline of the Slade’s history
Read: Slade Archives: Information for external researchers.

Read the Slade Archive Blog.
Follow the Slade Archive Project on Twitter and Facebook.
Read the article about the project on UCL News.