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Just the beginning…

As this is my first post I thought it best to introduce myself a bit. My name is Neil Lebeter and I am the new archivist at The New Art Gallery Walsall. I’ve been given the rather exciting task of sorting out the Epstein Archive and working with the fantastic Bob and Roberta Smith to show this largely untapped resource to you all in a number of wonderful ways. This blog is for everything really; debate, comment and correspondence. Please feel free to get in touch and, as this is to be the record of the project and its evolution, you can have a nosy at the messages Bob and I send to each other – no matter how trivial!

The Epstein Archive burst into activity this week in what has been a rather interesting/exciting/disturbing/amusing first 3 days. Bob and I rifled through the archive with a view of putting on a small display in the foyer and the library of the gallery, which is now set up (see pictures below). This was a fantastic way for us to scratch the surface of the Epstein Archive and get to know one Garman family member in particular; Theodore. I think Bob and I both had an interest in Theo before arriving here as he is such an interesting and, ultimately, tragic character. The letters of his that his mother Kathleen kept only support our theory that he was a thoroughly decent bloke as, even from a young age, his personality really comes through in his writing.

In the display, we concentrated on the humorous aspects of his letters to Kathleen, in which he requests some frankly bizarre items to be sent to him, and also on the annotated books of Theo’s that the archive also holds. These were particularly poignant given his short and troubled life as the notes and scribbles in these volumes, in a way, chart his declining mental health, which ultimately lead to his death.

For both these displays, Bob painted up some fantastic signs that highlight the amusing, farcical and tragic elements of these objects and, in my humble opinion, make the archival material all the more engaging. We do hope that you agree!