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

The article focuses on the 1948 London exhibition *40,000 Years of Modern Art*, organized by Roland Penrose and the newly formed Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA). This ambitious show juxtaposed nearly 200 works of modernist, prehistoric, and Indigenous art from Europe, Africa, Oceania, and the Americas, notably including Picasso's *Les Demoiselles d'Avignon* on loan from New York's Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). The exhibition was innovative in its thematic and didactic approach, integrating diverse art forms to suggest aesthetic and existential affinities between modern and so-called "primitive" art, and it introduced curatorial practices that influenced later British exhibitions. Despite its initial impact and scale, the exhibition quickly faded from public and institutional memory, overshadowed by subsequent ICA projects and changing art world dynamics. The article also situates the exhibition within postwar cultural networks and debates about modernism, primitivism, and museum practice.