40,000 Years of Modern Art at the Institute of Contemporary Arts: A Major Curatorial Event in Postwar London

40,000 Years of Modern Art was a remarkable exhibition held in London in 1948 in the unlikely setting of a cinema basement. Conceived by Roland Penrose, and consisting of nearly 200 works from Europe, Africa and the Americas, including Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avignon , it was the second exhibition organized by the fledgling London Institute of Contemporary Arts. It was notable for the scale of its ambition, the quality of the works included and the speed of its realization. This article asks why 40,000 Years of Modern Art thereafter faded from the public record and has been overlooked subsequently.