Exploring art and artists through the Adam International Review A Shared Learning Project with Kings College Archives

King’s College London was founded in 1829 and has gone on to become one of the country’s leading universities, with courses in arts, sciences and medicine. The modern College is the result of mergers with a number of other institutions, including the medical schools of Guy’s and St Thomas’s hospitals. The Archives preserves the heritage of the College through the records of the institution and its constituent parts and a large number of archives acquired to support research excellence. Amongst the latter are the archives of Adam International Review, an avant garde literary and cultural review which had its genesis in pre Second World War and translated to Britain during the war by its editor Miron Grindea. Although the Adam International Review never enjoyed an enormous circulation it rapidly punched above its weight and drew in contributions from a rich variety of artists, writers, poets and musicians from across Europe with many drawn from the Jewish cultural diaspora. Contributors ranged from those just starting out to household names. Included are , Edmund Blunden, Andre Gide, , Yehudi Menuhin, Siegfied Sassoon, Stefan Zweig and many others. Within the archives of the review are a number of original artworks, contributed for inclusion in the review, about which comparatively little is known. The purpose of this Shared Learning Project is to work with the collection of artworks and copies of the Review in order to help the archives staff by piecing together information about individual artists. It is hoped that through our research we will be able to provide a better understanding of the body of their work including, for example, where it has been exhibited or hangs. If you have an interest in European cultural history, Jewish history, intellectual history and art, or enjoy the detective work of research, then this is the project for you. This project will require a good deal of internet work as well as working in the Reading Room of the College Archives in the Strand and probably further research at authoritative art libraries. A reading knowledge of one or more European languages or possibly Hebrew would be helpful but not essential. The outcome of the project will be short biographies or summaries that can be used by Kings in an on line catalogue, alongside images of the works in question. There is a possibility of an exhibition of the artworks being mounted in the early summer of 2013. The project team will meet fortnightly from 11-1.00 on Tuesdays. The project will last for 12 weeks, commencing on 15th January and finishing on 19th March. Closing date for applications is Monday 3rd December. For further information and application form contact: Yvonne Zane at [email protected] or Di Widdis at [email protected]