Tate Archive celebration: 40 Degrees of Separation

The Tate Archive will celebrate its 40th anniversary this week with a fascinating new display featuring forty items from the Tate Archive Collection, all of them interconnected in sequence.

The 40 Degrees of Separation display features 40 items from the Tate Archive Collection, including Kenneth Clark’s notebook when he was making the epic Civilisation for the BBC, Keith Vaughan’s suicide note, Jake Chapman’s schoolboy essay on his favourite painters and a loving letter from Constable to his wife.

Over 40 archives have been pledged as gifts from artists, individuals and institutions with highlights including 30,000 photographs taken by Gemma Levine comprising, among other items, the most comprehensive set of images documenting the last decade of Henry Moore’s life.

Nicholas Serota, Director of the Tate said: “Tate Archive is the largest archive of British art in the world with over 1 million items. The Archive is a treasure trove of histories of modern and contemporary British art, artists and their circles. We are deeply grateful to the many individuals who have generously given their archives to help build this outstanding resource .“

The Tate Archive holds over 750 archive collections that reveal the artistic and personal histories of artists over the past century.

40 Degrees of Separation is on display at Tate Britain in the Goodison Room until February 2010.

To find our more about Tate Archive visit: http://www.tate.org.uk/research/researchservices/readingrooms/