HaggBridge.com

Something that’s fascinated me for a long time is the rationale behind advertising campaigns for exhibitions, like the one that pops up on the Tate’s website for Gauguin: Maker of Myth. Most of you will be aware that the primary marketing tool of any exhibition project is this type of poster image. The standard for [...]

TGA 7315 Model of ships, nd, J M W Turner , Tate Archive. Copyright Tate My name is David Pilling and I am the Archive Assistant Curator at Tate Archive. My job is a varied one but in the main I deal with photographic orders, loans, single items and various cataloguing projects. The item I [...]

It’s just dawned on me that we begin installing Gauguin: Maker of Myth in precisely four weeks time. I know, I know, it should be obvious, right? The exhibition opens on 30 September, after all. But even though I’ve worked on many exhibitions at Tate, there’s always a moment when the penny finally drops, and [...]

TGA 7247 'Winged Figure' 1962, Barbara Hepworth , Tate Archive. Copyright Bowness I’m Andrew Neilson and I’m an archive cataloguer here in the Tate Archive. My main responsibilities involve organising and describing our archive collections, a job in which I take great pleasure as it offers me the chance to work closely with a variety [...]

All you Gauguin enthusiasts will know that he often signed his works ‘P GO’. Sometime last year, when we were throwing around ideas about merchandising during the exhibition, someone came up with the lovely idea of commissioning a children’s book, featuring Gauguin’s animals, birds and etc, with the title ‘P GO’. No doubt it conjured [...]

TGA 7129 'Artist's Culture' 1971, Gilbert & George (born 1943, born 1942), Tate Archive. Copyright Gilbert & George I’m Allison and I’m an archive cataloguer here in the Tate Archive, I essentially rearrange and describe archive collections, be it business papers, personal items or collections that relate to works held in the Tate. To represent [...]

I’ve had a query on the blog about Gauguin’s relationship with Edgar Degas. While I ponder on this – it’s a great question but the answer is complicated – I thought you’d like to know that Degas owned ten paintings by Gauguin, a number of which are in our exhibition. Here’s one, Te Faaturuma (translated [...]

TGA 7050PH51W, Paul Nash (1889–1946). For the first Tate Archive 40 blog post I have selected a seminal item from one of our most important collections – Paul Nash’s personal papers and photographs – acquired in our first year of collecting: 1970. This photograph of a wrecked German aircraft taken at a Metal and Produce Recovery Unit at [...]

When was the last time clogs were fashionable? I have a vague memory of my mum wearing some slim-line versions in the 1970s. And who hasn’t been given some as a souvenir from a Dutch holiday? Personally, I think they’re a form of torture, but Gauguin seemed to like wearing them. On a recent trip [...]

I was very sad to hear about the recent theft of a Van Gogh painting from the Mahmoud Khalil Museum in Egypt. When we think of the art treasures associated with Cairo, it would be those of Ancient Egypt, or Islamic art, or even European Orientalist paintings, right? It is amazing to think of a [...]