About Artist: Unknown
From the ancient to the contemporary – whether in a museum, book or auction house – the way we engage with art has revolved around the cult of the individual. But what happens when we don’t know who made something?
Artist: Unknown takes this question as its focus, bringing together for the first time an extraordinary selection of anonymous art and artefacts from the University of Cambridge’s renowned museums and collections.
About the Kettle’s Yard archive
At the heart of the archive at Kettle’s Yard are Jim Ede’s personal papers, which formed part of his gift to the University of Cambridge in 1966. These document the wide range of influences throughout Ede’s life, from his experience of World War I, through the ‘open house’ the Ede’s kept in Hampstead through the late 1920s and early 1930s and the vibrant set who attended their parties; the weekend retreats for servicemen on leave from Gibraltar at the Ede’s house in Tangier at the end of World War II; the ‘lecturer in search of an audience’ who travelled to the US in the early 1940s; to the prolific correspondence not just with artist friends, but other notable figures such as T E Lawrence; and the development of Kettle’s Yard and its collections.
