• KALEIDOSCOPE: WORKS ON PAPER RECENTLY ACQUIRED FOR SCOTLAND

Released: July 2008

PERMANENT COLLECTION EXHIBITION
KALEIDOSCOPE: WORKS ON PAPER RECENTLY ACQUIRED FOR SCOTLAND
15 July – 21 September 2008
RSA LOWER GALLERIES, NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

Presenting an impressive and varied selection of drawings, prints and photographs, this summer Kaleidoscope will allow visitors to the National Gallery of Scotland to view more than seventy works recently acquired for the nation. The free exhibition drawn from the permanent collections of the National Gallery, the Portrait Gallery, the Scottish National Photography Collection and the Gallery of Modern Art will span the Renaissance to the present day, and will include a broad range of media and techniques.

Among the highlights are a vibrant sketch of the Holy Family by the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Tiepolo; an important early watercolour by nineteenth-century Scottish artist E A Walton; a contemporary pastel portrait of the actress Tilda Swinton by her husband John Byrne; spectacular aerial photographs taken by Alfred Buckham in the 1920s; a striking self-portrait by the celebrated American photographer Lee Miller; and Picasso’s harrowing etching Weeping Woman. 

The exhibition illustrates the diversity of ways in which major works enter the national collections, from direct purchases – often with generous support from funding bodies, notably The Art Fund – through public-spirited gifts and bequests, to works accepted by the government in lieu of tax (AIL). 

Aidan Weston-Lewis, co-curator of the exhibition, said: “For its sheer quality and range, Kaleidoscope offers something for everyone.  It showcases the very best of the works on paper acquired across the Galleries over the past few years, and acknowledges the generosity of our many donors and supporters.  It marks something of a departure for the NGS in that works from different periods and in different media are displayed together in a loosely thematic hang”. 

Important contemporary acquisitions featured in the exhibition include works by Scottish Turner Prize winner Douglas Gordon and celebrated British land artist Richard Long – both of whom have enjoyed recent retrospectives at the NGS.  The earliest work on show, dating from about 1550, is believed by gallery curators to be a previously unrecognised drawing by the great Venetian painter Titian, by whom very few drawings are known. 

Kaleidoscope promises to be a thought-provoking, lively display which will complement the larger Summer Season exhibitions this year. The exhibition will no doubt prove popular this summer with tourists as well as regular visitors to The Mound, who continue to appreciate the changing displays of the Galleries’ large and internationally important collection of works on paper and photographs.

-Ends-

For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland Press Office on 0131 624 6332/325/314. pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org

NOTES TO EDITORS:

Picture desks are welcome to send photographers on the first day of the exhibition. Please contact the Press Office in advance to arrange this.

• NGS Art Competition for Schools 2008

Released: June 2008
Photocall: 12.15 – 1.30, Wednesday 18 June 2008

Budding Scottish artists rewarded in record-breaking year for NGS Art Competition for Schools

Sponsored by Scottish Widows

The best young artists in the country are to be celebrated on 18 June 2008 at the National Galleries of Scotland, when the prize-winners of the 2008 Art Competition for Schools will receive their awards from John Leighton, Director General of the NGS. Fantastic prizes for individual winners, classes and schools will be collected by over fifty of Scotland’s brightest young things and their prize-winning works of art will tour the country for the next year. Lord Leitch will also speak at the ceremony as Chairman of Scottish Widows, who are sponsoring the competition for a third consecutive year.

With a record-breaking 4,016 entries received this year, entrants faced tough competition in all six categories: nursery, primary schools (P1-3 and P4-7), secondary schools, special education schools and groups. Competition entries were based on selected NGS works, with the aim of encouraging Scottish schoolchildren to interact with and seek inspiration from works in their national collection. The competition was launched online in December when schools from all over Scotland were invited to enter. Thousands of artworks were subsequently received from places as far apart as Ballindalloch and the Borders.

Praising the high standard of entries this year, Linda McClelland, event organiser, said: “The standard of entries received this year has been outstanding, clearly demonstrating the creativity being nurtured in Scottish schools. I am delighted that the exhibition is to go on tour once again, making it easily accessible to the public throughout the coming year.”

Lord Leitch, Chairman of Scottish Widows, said: “This competition offers a great opportunity to encourage creativity in children and Scottish Widows is delighted to be supporting the National Galleries once again this year. With such an overwhelming response from across the country, competition for winning prizes has been tough and I would like to congratulate all the winners. I’m sure that the experience will have helped nurture the talents of these budding artists which will be appreciated by all those who visit the exhibitions as it tours Edinburgh, Glasgow and Inverness.”

As part of last year’s touring exhibition, works from the 2007 competition were displayed in Aberdeen Royal Infirmary from November 2007 to February 2008. These works were much praised by over 32,000 patients, visitors and hospital staff and so well was the work received that the hospital has arranged to purchase 6 of the pieces to add to their permanent collection. These six artists will be present at the prize-giving ceremony to collect their cheques.

- ENDS -
Further information and images from the NGS Press Office
Tel: 0131 624 6325 / 332 / 247 or e-mail pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org
www.nationalgalleries.org

NOTES TO EDITORS:

From Wednesday 18 June, the 53 winning pieces will be on show in the Weston Link at the National Galleries of Scotland before touring to the Pentagon Business Centre, Glasgow and Raigmore Hospital, Inverness.

WINNERS:
Category A: Nursery Schools (Theme - Birds)
1st place
Zofia Magnucka, Edinburgh
2nd place
Allan John MacInness, Kyle
3rd place
Ross Elder, Kirkliston

Special Merit
Meghan Attah, Glasgow
Finn Loveman, Glasgow
Millie Sharkey, Edinburgh
Harris Ferrol, Aberdeen
Sam James, Croy
Ani Stewart, Lauder
Charlie Hamilton, Edinburgh
Category B: Primary 1-3 (Theme - Can You See the Music?)
1st place
Ben Mitchell, Bonnyrigg
2nd place
Paul Dowdeswell, Dalkeith
3rd place
Jack Scanlon, Edinburgh

Special Merit
Alexander Khaleeli, Edinburgh
Blair Grant, Edinburgh
Vicky Goodwin, Perth
Fraser Morrison, Blairgowrie
Ryan Hartley, Dollar
Katrina Bruce, Pathhead
Gregor Malone, Edinburgh
Category C: Primary 4-7 (Theme - Sit in Splendour)
1st place
Paul Weir, Loanhead
2nd place
Jake Scollay, Auchtertool
3rd place
Robbie Campbell, Glasgow

Special Merit
Marc Jackson, Livingston
Jed Clelland, Edinburgh
Lewis MacLeod, Isle of Colonsay
Matthew Lovie, Kintore
Jack Burrows, Inverness
Oliver Phillips, New Galloway
Megan, Dollar
Category D: S1 and S2 (Theme - Art to Wear)
1st place
Holly Joanne Sutherland, Edinburgh
2nd place
Kyle McAllister, Penicuik
3rd place
Ross McDonald, Perth

Special Merit
Rebecca Houston, Aberdeen
Megan Laing, Edinburgh
Jack Reid, Dunfermline
Fiona Glen, Edinburgh
Jennifer McGhee, East Kilbride
Kirsty Mearns, Dollar
Sarah Martin, Arbroath
Category E: Special Education Schools (Theme - Come Closer)
1st place
Anthony Knights, Edinburgh
2nd place
Kyle Tilley, Irvine
3rd place
Michael Carmichael, Glasgow
Special Merit
William Dickson, Irvine
Jamie Kamal, Edinburgh
Cody Fairgrieve, Edinburgh
Sarah McLean, Edinburgh
Gordon Irvine, Glasgow
Rei Komiya, Edinburgh
Michaela Donnelly, Edinburgh
Category F: Group Work (Theme - selected from other categories)
1st place
Hillside School, Aberdour
2nd place
Knightsridge Primary School Livingston
3rd place
St Serf's Primary School, Alloa

• Footlights: Capturing the essence of performance

Released: June 2008
Photocall: Friday 8 August 2008

FOOTLIGHTS:
Capturing the Essence of Performance
9 August – 16 November 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

The show must go on … and this August the National Gallery of Scotland will see the curtain go up on a special display. Footlights will examine how artists have captured the fleeting nature of theatrical performances over the centuries. Included will be works by Toulouse Lautrec, designs for the Russian theatre by Natalya Goncharova, and images of Berlin cabaret by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner. On show will be designs for fantastic costume and stage sets, as well as prints and drawings made by celebrated artists capturing a wide variety of spectator orientated events – some artists have even put the audience in the spotlight!

Footlights has been specially organised to coincide with the SIBMAS International Conference, which will be held at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama in Glasgow in August 2008. SIBMAS (the Société Internationale des Bibliothèque et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle) is the international association for museums and libraries of the performing arts. It will be the first time that this prestigious event has been held in Scotland and a visit to see Footlights will be a highlight of the itinerary of the conference delegates. The display will also coincide with the International Festival and Fringe events in Edinburgh.

Footlights offers a glimpse into the world of the performer and reveals how the visual arts can capture momentary events. The works on display have been selected not only from the Prints and Drawings collection at the National Gallery of Scotland, but also from the Scottish Portrait and Modern Art Galleries. The show’s eclectic and lively mix of images should fire the imagination and reflect the spirit of the Edinburgh Festival itself.

Discussing the show, curator Valerie Hunter said “It has been a revelation for me to see just how many artists over the centuries turned to the drama of the stage for inspiration and how much the theatre and its stars have continued to inspire artist’s work right up to today”.

A small related display of photographs focussing on Scottish stars of stage and screen will also be on display in the Weston Link showcases.

-Ends-

For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland Press Office on 0131 624 6332/325/314.

pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org

   

• Gerhard Richter Retrospective

Released: 12 May 2008

BANK OF SCOTLAND TOTAL ART SERIES CONTINUES WITH MAJOR RETROSPECTIVE ON RICHTER

Gerhard Richter: Paintings from private collections
8 November 2008 – 4 January 2009
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission tbc

Bank of Scotland and the National Galleries of Scotland are pleased to announce the forthcoming exhibition Gerhard Richter: Paintings from private collections as the next instalment to the Bank of Scotland totalART series. The NGS and HBOS announced last year the biggest ever sponsorship of modern art in Scotland with Bank of Scotland investing over £400,000 in Bank of Scotland totalART, a series of two major modern art exhibitions at the National Gallery Complex. The first exhibition, Andy Warhol: A Celebration of Life..and Death was a huge success with over 95,000 people visiting the exhibition from 4 August to 7 October 2007.

By working in partnership, Bank of Scotland and the National Galleries aim to ensure that modern art reaches the widest possible audience, creating educational and inspirational experiences for all.

As a young artist, Richter produced work which not only contributed towards the rejuvenation of painting in Germany, but which also, through the artist’s use of printed media, provided an equivalent to some of the concerns of American Pop Art. It is, therefore, most appropriate that this exhibition, devoted to one of the greatest living post-war artists, follows our recent exhibition on Andy Warhol.

John Leighton, Director-General, National Galleries of Scotland said: “Gerhard Richter is arguably the most important and influential contemporary artist alive today so I am delighted that this major show will be coming to Scotland as the second exhibition in the Bank of Scotland totalART series. I would like to thank Bank of Scotland for their continued support and I look forward to working with them to bring top-class modern and contemporary art to Scotland.”

Sarah Cran, Head of Sponsorship, HBOS said: “We are extremely excited about the forthcoming Gerhard Richter exhibition and are delighted that the work of such an important artist will form part of the Bank of Scotland totalART series. The Warhol exhibition was a huge success which was in part due to the fantastic education programme which accompanied it. We are looking forward to creating even more innovative and unique education opportunities with the Richter exhibition, engaging the widest possible audience with his work.’

The exhibition will comprise more than 60 large scale works dating from 1963 to 2007 from three main private collections: the Böckmann in Berlin, the Ströher in Darmstadt and Frieder Burda Museum in Baden Baden, Germany. It will also be complemented by works in the artist’s own possession.

The exhibition will present the whole range of Richter’s excessive oeuvre, from photorealistic paintings to large-scale abstract compositions with their fascinating colours and technical perfection.

For further information or images:
For National Galleries please contact:
Press Office on 0131 624 6325/6247/6314/6332 or pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org.

For Bank of Scotland please contact:
Gillian McCormack on 0141 204 7970 or gillian@materialmc.co.uk
Jenny Mungall on 0141 204 7970 or jenny@materialmc.co.uk

-ENDS-

• Vanity Fair Portraits

Released: April 2008
Press View: Thursday 12 June, 11.30am to 1pm
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh

VANITY FAIR PORTRAITS: PHOTOGRAPHS 1913 – 2008
14 June - 21 September 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh
Admission £6/£4

A collaboration between Vanity Fair and National Portrait Gallery, London
Sponsored by

Some of the greatest portrait photographs of the twentieth century were taken for, or published in, Vanity Fair. This remarkable selection of 150 classic images features works from the magazine’s first period (1913-1936), displayed for the first time with works from the contemporary Vanity Fair (1983-present).

From the magazine’s first incarnation, celebrated subjects such as Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Jean Harlow are shown in portraits by legendary photographers including Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Baron De Meyer, Man Ray and George Hurrell. From the magazine’s re-launch in 1983, the works of photographers including Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber and Mario Testino will be featured, depicting a wide range of subjects from Arthur Miller to Madonna.

James Holloway, Director of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery: “The Vanity Fair Portraits exhibition has been a great success in London and it is incredibly exciting to be able to show this beautiful show to the people of Scotland. Thanks to Vanity Fair, the National Portrait Gallery and Lloyds TSB Scotland this exhibition should be one of the highlights of the NGS summer season programme.”

Of the historic exhibition combining the early and contemporary periods of Vanity Fair’s photographic history, Editor Graydon Carter says: “It’s only fitting that the august Scottish National Portrait Gallery will present the first exhibition of Vanity Fair’s iconic portraits. To have all of the works displayed together will serve as a remarkable photographic history.”

Susan Rice, Chairman and Chief Executive, Lloyds TSB Scotland said: “We are tremendously excited to be working in partnership with the National Galleries of Scotland once again, particularly when our collaboration leads to such an iconic exhibition being secured for Edinburgh. Vanity Fair Portraits is certain to bring many new visitors to the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and will be a major attraction during the summer season.”

From the beginning, British, Irish and American authors were frequently profiled and their writings published in Vanity Fair, and among the vintage portraits shown in the exhibition will be iconic images of H.G. Wells, James Joyce, D.H. Lawrence, Rebecca West, Ernest Hemingway and George Bernard Shaw. The magazine’s mix of artistic seriousness and popular celebrity meant that commissioned portraits of these authors, and of artists such as Claude Monet and Augustus John, were displayed alongside photographs of actors, musicians and athletes.

In addition to showing the works of acknowledged leaders in early twentieth century portrait photography, Vanity Fair Portraits will feature the works of now lesser-known practitioners, among them the great British-born theatre photographer, Florence Vandamm. Her portrait of American actress Alice White and her group portrait of the Albertina Rasch Dancers, both taken in the late 1920s, remind us of her singular talent and re-establish her in the canon of great portrait photographers of the era.

Vanity Fair Portraits, mounted to coincide with the 25th anniversary of the modern-era magazine, will present a rare opportunity to see some of the definitive portraits of the ‘Jazz Age’, including now classic studies of Louis Armstrong, Josephine Baker and Noël Coward.

Although Vanity Fair suspended publication in 1936, it was resurrected in another period of decadence and excess, the 1980s. Its purpose remained true to the original publication: to record modern men and women of culture, stature and talent. As in the early period, portrait photography was the graphic bedrock of the magazine. In the tradition of its legendary editor Frank Crowninshield (1914-36), the revived monthly commissioned the world’s leading portrait photographers, among them Jonathan Becker, Harry Benson, Nan Goldin, Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Mario Testino, and Bruce Weber.

Vanity Fair’s iconic photographs continue to make news. Since the magazine’s re-launch in 1983, cover images including the Reagans dancing (1985), a very pregnant Demi Moore (1991), Princess Diana of Wales at her last formal photo session (1997), a formal portrait of President Bush’s Afghan War Cabinet (2002) and most recently a nude study of actresses Scarlett Johansson and Keira Knightley (2006) have been embedded in the collective cultural consciousness.

- ENDS -

Notes to Editors:

TOUR
Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913-2008 will open at the National Portrait Gallery, London on 14 February 2008 (until 26 May). Vanity Fair Portraits will tour to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles / LACMA (26 October 2008 – 1 March 2009); and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia (12 June – 30 August 2009).

Vanity Fair is a registered trademark of Advance Magazine Publishers Inc.

For further information please contact the National Galleries of Scotland Press Office on 0131 624 6325/ 6332/ 6247 or pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org.

www.nationalgalleries.org

• Heroes

HEROES
30 May – 7 December 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh
Admission free

The phenomenal success of Self-Help, one of the best-selling publications of the Victorian era, and the model for a literary form that has become an industry in itself, will be the subject of a fascinating new exhibition which opens at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this spring.  Heroes will examine the themes, appeal and legacy of Samuel Smiles’ classic motivational book, which has sold millions of copies, in more than forty languages, around the world. A collaboration between the National Library of Scotland and the SNPG, the exhibition will bring together a diverse range of material, including dozens of original manuscripts and rare books, many of which will be on display for the first time.  These will be shown alongside paintings, drawings and sculpture, by artists such as David Wilkie, Thomas Faed, Henry Raeburn, Sir Francis Chantrey and Bertel Thorvaldsen, which will illuminate the lives of the people promoted by Smiles as contemporary role models.  Much of the material on display will come from the John Murray Archive, which was purchased by the NLS in 2006.

Self-Help: with Illustrations of Character, Conduct and Perseverance by Dr Samuel Smiles was published on 22 November 1859, the same day as Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species.  Using brief stories and quotations from the lives of hundreds of inspirational figures, Haddington-born Smiles set out to provide his readership with useful examples of self-reliance and self-improvement.  Largely aimed at ordinary working people Self-Help celebrates the triumph of individuals over adversity, and espouses the virtues of thrift, duty, perseverance and hard work.  The book was an instant success, selling 20,000 copies in the UK in its first year (more than Darwin’s book sold in twenty), and more than 250,000 by the end of the century - an astonishing achievement in an age when most families possessed very few books. [See Notes to Editors for biographical notes on Smiles and more on the book’s global success]. 

Heroes will trace the evolution of Smiles’ beliefs, the history of his phenomenal book, in all its many editions, and the significance of its world-wide impact.  It will also examine the lives of some of those whom Smiles held up as an example to his readers.  For the purposes of the exhibition these have been divided into four areas of interest: reformers; military heroes; artists and writers; and ‘new heroes’, or leading figures of the industrial age, such as engineers, scientists and industrialists. 

REFORMERS
Smiles’ heroes in the first category included the minister Thomas Guthrie (1803-73), who was a passionate supporter of free education for poor children, and the missionary and explorer David Livingstone (1813-73).  The latter had worked for twelve hours a day in a cotton mill from the age of ten, before training as a doctor, and dedicating his life to missionary work in Africa.  Fittingly, Livingstone’s manuscript for Narrative of an Expedition to the Zambesi and its Tributaries, will feature in the exhibition.

MILITARY HEROES
Two of Smiles’ greatest military heroes were Lord Nelson (1758-1805) and the Duke of Wellington (1769-1852) whom he admired not so much for their success as commanders, but because they lived their lives with an inspiring sense of duty.

ARTISTS AND WRITERS
In the creative field Smiles singled out the novelist and poet Sir Walter Scott (1771-1832) who selflessly and tirelessly worked to pay off a large debt incurred in a failed joint business venture; and Thomas Carlyle, a major influence on Smiles, who was forced to painstakingly rewrite his book The French Revolution, after his only manuscript copy was accidentally burned by a friend’s servant.  Documents from the John Murray Archive, relating to both Scott and Carlyle, and their relationship to Smiles, will be on display.

‘NEW’ HEROES
During the nineteenth century scientists, inventors and engineers created a new industrial world, and for the first time the wider public came to recognise and admire their work.  For Smiles, engineers such as James Watt (1736-1819) and James Nasmyth (1808–90), or geologists such as Hugh Miller (1802-56) were among the greatest heroes of the age, sharing the admirable characteristics of those working in creative, military and reforming fields. 

As Self-Help contained only short accounts of people’s lives and character, Smiles generally ignored or overlooked his heroes’ flaws, which he viewed as a natural part of their human condition.  However, while Smiles could excuse the imperfections of figures such as David Livingstone, or Lord Nelson, there were others who, though they displayed many Self-Help values, were so flawed that the author attacked and criticised them.  Heroes will highlight a number of these ‘failed’ role models, including the poets Robert Burns and Lord Byron and the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte.

Though he held relatively progressive views on the question of their very limited political, legal and social rights, few women get more than a passing reference in Self-Help.  While this omission largely reflects the culture of the period, it underlines the irony that some of the greatest obstacles to overcome in the nineteenth century were, arguably, those faced by women.  Heroes will seek to redress this imbalance by highlighting the lives of contemporary women whose gender proved to be no obstacle to achievement and success.  These will include

• Caroline Norton (1808–1877), a tireless campaigner for women and children’s rights, who managed to win for women the right to own property and the right of custody of their children in a divorce.
• Mary Somerville (1780-1872) who, as one of the most popular scientific and mathematical writers of the nineteenth century managed to succeed in an area wholly dominated by men.
• Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), the nurse who became famous for her hard work and self-sacrifice in the Crimean War, and who used her fame to reform nursing and establish it as a respectable profession for women.

Speaking of the exhibition, David McClay, curator of the John Murray Archive at the National Library of Scotland, said, ‘Though it is largely overlooked in the UK today, it is almost impossible to assess the enormity of the impact made by Self-Help.  It was a book that genuinely changed people’s lives, and was cited by figures such as Lord Leverhulme (1851–1925), the soap manufacturer who used his wealth for the education and welfare of his workforce, as a major factor in their success.  If we can judge by its continued popularity in the Far East, Self-Help retains much of its relevance and inspirational power, and it has a direct legacy in the enormous market for motivational literature so familiar to us now.  We hope this exhibition will offer an insight into the values that underpinned the lives of Smiles’ role models, and perhaps help us to understand the ways in which we make our own heroes.’

The exhibition also invites visitors to think about what constitutes a role model, or even a ‘hero’ today, and whether the principles that Smiles outlined are still pertinent today. It is timely that a new book, Self-Help for the 21st Century, is to be launched by Luath Press just before the exhibition. In it, Malcolm Good takes a look at how Smiles’ original concept of self-help fits today by interviewing people from various backgrounds for their views on topics such as ambition, upbringing, support from others and perseverance. With their compelling mixture of opinion, social observation and biography, these contributions provide an interesting and thought-provoking commentary, offering an up-to-date view on just what Self-Help for the 21st Century means for different people.

Heroes has been jointly organised by the National Library of Scotland, and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and is the second project in a new ‘Partnership for Learning and Access’, created by the two institutions in 2006.  

For further information and images, please contact the National Galleries Press Office on
0131 624 6325/ 332/ 314 /247; pressoffice@nationalgalleries.org
www.nationalgalleries.org

http://www.nls.uk/jma/index.html

Notes to Editors

Samuel Smiles Biography
Samuel Smiles was born in Haddington, in East Lothian, in 1812, and his life was itself an example of self-help.  He had a humble and undistinguished upbringing (one teacher told him, ‘Smiles! You will never be fit for anything but sweeping the streets of your native borough.’) and struggled to make his way as a doctor, newspaper editor and railway company secretary.  In his spare time he campaigned for parliamentary, social and educational reform through lecturing and writing.   His first real success as an author came at the age of 45, with his biography of the engineer George Stephenson.  This encouraged Smiles to try again with his previously rejected book Self-Help.  Despite his new success as an author Smiles kept his ‘day-job’, only retiring after a stroke at the age of 59.  His recovery required him to relearn how to read and write, but he continued to write into old age, and his final book was published when he was 82.  In all, he wrote 25 biographies and self-help books, as well as hundreds of articles, essays and pamphlets.

The International Success of Self-Help
Self-Help also enjoyed enormous success abroad, selling in millions from Iceland to Vietnam.  The range of foreign-language editions (including examples in Arabic, Armenian, Bengali, Bulgarian, Chinese, Croatian, Estonian, Gujerati, Greek, Marathi, Norwegian, Persian, Russian, Tamil, Turkish, Urdu and Welsh) reflects the enormous breadth of the book’s appeal.  The Spanish-language edition was hugely popular in South America, and in the USA, where relaxed copyright laws allowed publishers to sell cheap, unauthorised copies of Self-Help in massive numbers, the book influenced the next generation of self-help and success writers.  Self-Help was translated into most European languages, and was especially popular in Italy, where it was reprinted 59 times during the nineteenth century.  Though its popularity tailed off in the early twentieth century, when the book’s emphasis on self-reliance came under fire from the political Left, Self-Help remains in print in many countries, including Japan, where it has sold more than one million copies, China and Korea.

-ends-

 

• FANTASY AND FUNCTION: DESIGNS FOR GOLDSMITHS 1470-1830

Released: April 2008
Press View: Friday 2 May 2008

FANTASY AND FUNCTION:
DESIGNS FOR GOLDSMITHS 1470-1830
3 May – 3 August 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free
Carefully selecting works from the rich collection of the prints and drawings department, curators at the National Gallery of Scotland will offer visitors a chance to view some of the most intricate and delicate prints, in a display entitled Fantasy and Function: Designs for Goldsmiths 1470-1830. The ornament prints on show, will feature British and European designs that cover a period of great change, both historical and stylistic. Beautiful and functional, they were intended not just as decorative images, but also to be used as working designs.

The display features an extraordinary variety of subject matter; there will be around thirty designs, ranging from those for everyday items (tableware and vases), to the more specialised (sword pommels, military accoutrements and liturgical objects). Taking the opportunity to look closely at these prints, visitors may be surprised to find humorous and bawdy imagery within the designs – especially among the mischievous male figures featured in the sword pommels. Pointed political imagery and allegory can also be spotted within these meticulously detailed works.

Prints such as these were produced to fulfil a number of functions: some were intended as a pattern from which a goldsmith could work; others were a record of a precious object; there are also works which were intended as a display of the enjoyment and virtuosity of the printmaker. As historical records the prints reflect shifting aesthetic tastes during the period 1470-1830, and are often the only record of the existence of an object, which may have been melted down or lost.

Fantasy and Function is part of a programme of changing displays providing the public with opportunities to get to know the Galleries’ large and internationally important collection of works on paper. Intended as a complement to the National Museum of Scotland’s recent ‘Silver’ exhibition, this display highlights some little-known but remarkably sophisticated prints.

Fantasy and Function has been devised by NGS volunteer Marjorie Connell, under the guidance of Christopher Baker, Deputy Director of the National Gallery of Scotland. Mrs Connell said: “It is our hope that this display will increase appreciation of the skill and virtuosity of the artists and printmakers who created these often overlooked images. From the tiny trade card of the Edinburgh goldsmith James Welsh, advertising work ‘after the neatest and cheapest manner’, to the heroic grandeur of a shield presented to the Duke of Wellington, they provide insights into a remarkable range of highly inventive and often fantastic work.”

-Ends-

For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland Press Office on 0131 624 6332/325/314. pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org

• FOTO: MODERNITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1918-1945

Released: April 2008
Press View: Thursday 5 June 2008, 11.30am-1pm

FOTO: MODERNITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1918-1945

7 June – 31 August 2008
DEAN GALLERY, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission £6.00 (concessions £4.00)

Launching the 2008 Summer Season at the National Galleries of Scotland, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe 1918-1945 is a thought-provoking and beautiful exhibition that explores the breathtaking success of modernist photography in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Austria, during a time of tremendous social and political upheaval. Organised by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, this will be the only European showing of Foto, and it will include many stunning works on display in Britain for the first time.

The first survey to explore this fascinating period in the history of photography, Foto will be unprecedented in scope, comprising around 150 photographs, books, and illustrated magazines, and will feature the work of more than 100 photographers. Images by internationally recognised masters such as László Moholy-Nagy, Hannah Höch, André Kertész, and El Lissitzky will be shown alongside those of historically important contemporaries such as Karel Teige, Edith Tudor Hart, František Drtikol, Martin Munkacsi and Trude Fleischmann.

Foto will demonstrate how photography caught the imagination of hundreds of progressive artists in central Europe, provided a creative outlet for thousands of dedicated amateurs, and became a symbol of modernity for millions through its use in magazines, newspapers, advertising, and books. The show will be divided into thematic sections, each bringing together work from across central Europe, to explore in depth eight key strands such as photomontage and war, gender identity, life and leisure in the modern metropolis, and the spread of Surrealism.

Commenting on the Dean Gallery exhibition, Matthew Witkovsky, Curator of Foto and Associate Curator of Photographs at NGA, Washington, said: “Presenting Foto in Scotland, home to many great talents of early photography and especially the team of David O. Hill and Robert Adamson, has a special meaning. The first art historical studies of photography were written in central Europe during the time period of this exhibition, and the very first such study was on Hill and Adamson. Past and present, regional and international came together in central Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, as they do in Edinburgh today.”

Simon Groom, Director of Modern & Contemporary Art at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “Foto is one of the most important and intelligent photography exhibitions of recent years. The works are radical politically as well as aesthetically, and the exhibition contains many of the ideas and iconic images that were to establish photography's status as the avant-garde medium of the 20th century.”

The first of four major summer exhibitions at the NGS, Foto will present a collection of stimulating and varied works of international significance, which will allow viewers to appreciate some of the most challenging, yet beautiful, experimental photography of the twentieth century.

-Ends-

For further information and images please contact the National Galleries of Scotland Press Office on 0131 624 6332/325/314. pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org

Notes to Editors:
Foto is divided into eight thematic sections:
• The Cut-and-Paste World: Recovering from War
An exploration of the significance of photomontage, a technique that epitomized the era and found broad acceptance among avant-garde artists and mass-media outlets.
• Laboratories and Classrooms
Consideration of the adoption by modernist photographers of experimental camera work and dark room techniques.
• Modern Living
Examination of how image-making helped popularize modernity in a region filled with anxieties over sudden and massive urban changes.
• New Women—New Men
Analysis of the way in which the changing role of men and women in European society was not only reflected in, but also shaped by modernist photography.
• The Spread of Surrealism
Discussion of the role of photography in the spread of Surrealism across Europe.
• Activist Documents
Consideration of the development of photojournalism and the photo-illustrated press, and the use of photography by political activists.
• Land without a Name
Examination of the modernist approach to photographing the urban landscape; and the use of modernist landscape photography in constructing myths of national identity.
• The Cut-and-Paste World: War Returns
Discussion of how, as the political ramifications of surrealism gained primary importance, so too did the potential of photomontage to comment on the state of the world.

The exhibition catalogue, Foto: Modernity in Central Europe, 1918–1945, written by Matthew S. Witkovsky, Associate Curator of Photographs, National Gallery of Art, is published by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, in association with Thames & Hudson, London and New York. It includes an introduction by Peter Demetz, professor emeritus at Yale University; biographies of the artists; an extensive bibliography; and maps of the region showing the geopolitical shifts of the early 20th century. The exhibition catalogue is published with the assistance of The Getty Foundation.

The exhibition was curated by Matthew Witkovsky, Associate Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Art, Washington. It travelled to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (October 12, 2007 – January 13, 2008) and the Milwaukee Art Museum (February 9 – May 4, 2008) before its only European showing at the Dean Gallery, Edinburgh (June 7 – August 31, 2008).

Foto is complemented by a specially curated film programme, highlighting the prolific correspondences of lens-based media in interwar Central Europe. The Filmprogram will be screened jointly at the National Galleries of Scotland and the Edinburgh Filmhouse.

• FACES AND PLACES: CREATING AND RECORDING SCOTLAND’S BUILDINGS

PRESS VIEW: 23 April 2008
11.30 am – 1.00 pm

FACES AND PLACES: CREATING AND RECORDING SCOTLAND’S BUILDINGS
24 April – 20 July 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh
Admission free

The richness of Scotland’s built heritage will be celebrated in a fascinating new exhibition which will open in Edinburgh this spring. A partnership between the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), Faces and Places will highlight the work of the architects, engineers, industrialists, archaeologists and antiquarians who created Scotland’s buildings, and who recorded and studied those of Scotland’s past. A wide range of items will be on display, including paintings, sculpture, drawings, photographs, notebooks and instruments. The exhibition is part of the celebration of the centenary of RCAHMS in 2008.

Notable figures featured in the exhibition include Robert Adam (1728-92), Robert Stevenson (1772-1850) and Alexander Curle (1866-1955). Born in Kirkcaldy, Fife, Robert Adam was the son of architect William Adam; with his brother, James (1732-94), he transformed British architecture, creating a new style based on an inventive use of classical motifs. Although best known as a marine engineer, designing and constructing at least eighteen lighthouses, including the Bell Rock, Robert Stevenson also worked on bridge, road, railway and canal projects. He established the Stevenson engineering practice which continued, managed by his descendants, until 1952. Alexander Curle was the first secretary of RCAHMS on its founding in 1908. He was appointed as an archaeologist, ‘an outdoor man’, in order ‘to make an inventory of the ancient monuments of Scotland of earlier date than 1707.’ Using a bicycle as his mode of transport, he single-handedly surveyed the counties of Berwickshire, Sutherland and Caithness between 1908 and 1911.

Imogen Gibbon, co-curator of the exhibition from the Scottish National Portrait Gallery said: “This project has provided an opportunity for two national collections to work together in displaying a variety of artefacts which reveal the history of Scotland’s built heritage. Uniting faces and places, the exhibition highlights a number of less well-known figures in addition to those more prominent in their field.”

Veronica Fraser from RCAHMS added: “Faces and Places is a major component of the RCAHMS centenary programme and we are delighted to be working with the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in bringing these individuals and their works to a wider audience.”

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland was set up in 1908, charged ‘to make an inventory of the Ancient and Historical Monuments…illustrative of the contemporary culture, civilization and conditions of life of the people in Scotland from the earliest times to the year 1707…’. In the century since then, RCAHMS’s responsibilities have expanded greatly, and the Commission now records and collects information relating to buildings and human landscapes of all periods.

Complementing the remit of RCAHMS to record and collect information, the Reference Section of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery houses a portrait archive of around 30,000 photographs of portraits in collections worldwide. This collection, with its particular emphasis on Scottish sitters and artists, is a unique and invaluable resource for those studying Scottish history, Scottish portraiture and the iconography of individual Scots. This resource has enabled portraits of many of the individuals featured in this exhibition to be sourced and has demonstrated how the research resources of two institutions can work in tandem to celebrate the centenary of RCAHMS with the exhibition Faces and Places – Creating and Recording Scotland’s Buildings.
-Ends-

For further information and images, please contact the National Galleries Press Office on 0131 624 6325/ 332/ 314 /247; pressoffice@nationalgalleries.org
www.nationalgalleries.org

NOTES TO EDITORS

Over the past hundred years RCAHMS has built up and acquired an extensive collection of illustrative and documentary material, from its own work, through acquiring other public collections, and through donations from architects’ practices, archaeological units and private individuals. All of this is accessible to the public through RCAHMS’s library and archive of manuscripts, photographs, drawings, models and digital media. (www.rcahms.gov.uk)

The first one hundred years: Through some of the individuals featured in the Faces and Places exhibition, Lesley Ferguson, Head of Collections, RCAHMS, will provide an insight into the wealth and range of the collections of the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland (RCAHMS), in this its centenary year. (Wednesday 21 May 2008, 12.45 – 1.30pm, free, Hawthornden Lecture Theatre - Weston Link (National Gallery Complex).

• MATERNITY: IMAGES OF MOTHERHOOD

Released: February 2008

MATERNITY: IMAGES OF MOTHERHOOD
15 March – 22 June 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, Belford Road, Edinburgh

Admission free

A fascinating exhibition, based on images of the mother and child from across the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, will open at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art this spring. Organised by the NGS Education Department, Maternity will explore the theme of motherhood in art, and consider how it has been interpreted and re-interpreted by artists over the past 500 years. The exhibition, which was recently shown at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery, will comprise eleven very different works, ranging in date from the early Renaissance to the present day. Highlights will include paintings by Sandro Botticelli, George Romney, William Quiller Orchardson, and Pablo Picasso.

The image of mother and child is iconic in European culture. A central theme in Christian imagery, it signifies the birth of Jesus as saviour of the world and the selfless love of his mother Mary. It also celebrates and underlines the importance of the family in Western society, and has parallels in other and earlier cultures.

Maternity will feature one of the most touching examples of the theme in Western painting, Botticelli’s fifteenth-century masterpiece The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child. Acquired by the National Gallery of Scotland in 2000, this celebrated painting, which is the earliest work in the display, combines a complex theological narrative with a very human depiction of a young mother and her baby. In contrast, one of the most recent works on show, Moyna Flannigan’s challenging painting Just like Daddy, subverts tradition by replacing the mother with the father in the composition. Other highlights of Maternity will include Domenichino’s Adoration of the Shepherds of 1606-8; a Mother and Child from Picasso’s pre-Cubist ‘Blue Period’; and Christine Borland’s Twin, Hand-Made, Child-Birth Demonstration Model of 1997.

Robin Baillie, Senior Outreach Officer at the National Galleries of Scotland, who has organised the show at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, said: “This exhibition demonstrates the richness of the National Collection and its ability to present a thematic interpretation of one of life’s primary experiences. Drawn from all eras, the important works of art in this selection can be compared and contrasted to reveal how the ‘old masters’ and contemporary artists have depicted motherhood.”

Maternity was first shown at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery from 10 November 2007 until 12 January 2008, where it was presented in partnership with Highland 2007 and The Highland Council. The partnership underlines one of the Galleries’ core aims – to extend its activities to embrace a truly national role, and to make the nation’s art collection accessible to the widest possible number of visitors.

-ends-

For further information on any of these exhibitions, please contact the Press Office on 0131 624 6325/314/332/247 or pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org
www.nationalgalleries.org

• ARTIST ROOMS Press Release

Press Release
Strictly embargoed until: Wednesday 27 February 2008 at 10.30 am

NEW £125 MILLION NATIONAL COLLECTION WILL BRING CONTEMPORARY ART TO AUDIENCES ACROSS BRITAIN

A new modern art collection, to be known as ARTIST ROOMS, has been established, it was announced today, created through one of the largest and most imaginative gifts of art ever made to museums in Britain. The gift has been made by Anthony d’Offay, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF), The Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. ARTIST ROOMS will be jointly owned and managed by National Galleries of Scotland and Tate on behalf of the nation.

The collection of 725 works, representing one of the most important holdings of post-war and international contemporary art in private hands, was assembled by Anthony d’Offay, whose London galleries played a key role in the promotion and understanding of twentieth-century art in the UK over a period of more than 30 years.

Anthony d’Offay assembled the collection through his gallery over 28 years. The transfer of ownership is being made under a part gift/part sale at cost agreement. The cost of the collection to Anthony d’Offay was some £26.5 million, and he asked for and will receive £26.5 million, i.e. the original costs of these works. The collection has been valued today at £125 million.

Anthony d’Offay’s guiding principle for the creation of ARTIST ROOMS is the concept of individual rooms devoted to particular artists. Many of these rooms were conceived as specific installations by the artists themselves. They have been assembled so that the work of important post-war artists can be seen and appreciated in depth. The primary aim is to create a new national resource of contemporary art that will strengthen displays and create exhibitions in museums and galleries throughout the UK so as to inspire new audiences, especially of young people. It is hoped that the donation by Anthony d’Offay will establish a precedent for philanthropy to be followed by other collectors.

ARTIST ROOMS takes the form of 50 rooms of contemporary art by 25 artists:
Diane Arbus (3 rooms), Joseph Beuys (5), Vija Celmins (1), Ian Hamilton Finlay (1),
Gilbert & George (2), Johann Grimonprez (1), Damien Hirst (1), Jenny Holzer (1), Alex Katz (1), Anselm Kiefer (3), Jeff Koons (2), Jannis Kounellis (4), Sol LeWitt (1), Richard Long (2),
Robert Mapplethorpe (3), Agnes Martin (1), Ron Mueck (1), Bruce Nauman (2), Gerhard Richter (3), Ed Ruscha (1), Robert Therrien (2), Bill Viola (1), Andy Warhol (6), Lawrence Weiner (1), and Francesca Woodman (1). In addition, there are ten works by a further seven artists: Georg Baselitz, Ellen Gallagher, Richard Hamilton, Mario Merz, Charles Ray, Robert Ryman and Cy Twombly.

A series of opening displays will be launched in Spring/Summer 2009 and staged at Tate galleries and the National Galleries of Scotland and a wide range of partner museums and galleries across the UK. The initial partners include Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums; De La Warr Pavilion, Bexhill; Firstsite, Colchester; Glasgow Museums; Inverness Museum and Art Gallery; National Museum of Wales, Cardiff; New Art Gallery, Walsall; MIMA, Middlesbrough; The Pier Arts Centre, Orkney; Ulster Museum, National Museums Northern Ireland and Wolverhampton Art Gallery. Additional galleries will be sought with which we hope to collaborate in 2009 and beyond.

ARTIST ROOMS will transform the nation’s collections of contemporary art as a whole. It will materially strengthen Tate’s ability to represent some of the most important art of the latter half of the twentieth century, and establish Edinburgh as a world-class destination for modern art. It will significantly enhance the way in which both institutions are able to represent post-war and contemporary art in their permanent displays.

The costs, which include the purchase of the artworks and set up and accessioning are
£28 million. These costs have been met by £10 million each from both the Scottish and British Governments, £7 million from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, and £1 million from The Art Fund. All taxes have been paid in full.

The agreement also includes a provision for the establishment of a £5 million endowment fund by the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate, the interest from which will be used for the acquisition of further rooms by important contemporary artists and emerging young artists, ensuring that the collection can continue to grow in the future. An initial contribution of £500,000 each from the National Galleries of Scotland and Tate has been made towards the £5 million endowment fund.

The museums have asked Anthony d’Offay, to serve as an unpaid ex officio curator for a period of
5 years, and he has agreed.

Anthony d’Offay’s donation also includes the gallery archive of over 1,000 boxes which provides a unique record of contemporary art over a thirty year period.

John Leighton, Director of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “Anthony d’Offay’s immense generosity and powerful vision lie behind this innovative partnership. At a stroke our level of ambition has been raised to a new height and there is now the potential to bring great modern art to our publics, not just in Edinburgh and London, but right across the country, from St Ives to Stromness.”

Nicholas Serota, Director, Tate said: “A gift of this magnitude will completely transform the opportunity to experience contemporary art in the UK. Anthony d'Offay’s imaginative generosity establishes a new dynamic for national collections and is without precedent anywhere in the world.”

Carole Souter, Director of NHMF said: “Anthony d'Offay's wonderful collection of modern and contemporary art is one of the most important in private hands anywhere in the world. The National Heritage Memorial Fund's £7 million grant is safeguarding an extraordinarily rich collection of works for future generations to explore and enjoy."

David Barrie, Director of The Art Fund, said: "Anthony d’Offay's exceptional generosity has given us a once in a lifetime opportunity to transform the nation’s collections of the very best international modern art. The Art Fund, the only private sector contributor to the funding package, has given the second largest grant in its history to ensure that this extraordinary collection can be a source of inspiration to everyone throughout the UK, now and always.”
Linda Fabiani MSP, Minister for Europe, External Affairs & Culture said: “This is a hugely significant acquisition for the National Galleries and for Scotland - it adds real weight to the cultural renaissance we are experiencing here. The quality and acclaim of the works on display reinforces our reputation as arts enthusiasts and shows Scotland as a serious player on the cultural stage. The collection offers an opportunity to both inspire and engage with the widest range of people, in particular our young people. The doors to modern art have been well and truly opened for everyone in Scotland – I want to see everyone, young and old, from Scotland and beyond, visiting Artist Rooms and experiencing the very best in contemporary art.”
Press Enquiries:

Patricia Convery, National Galleries of Scotland
Tel: 0131 624 6325

Helen Beeckmans, Head of Press, Tate
Tel: 020 7887 4940

Erica Bolton, Bolton & Quinn
Tel: 020 7221 5000 (5 lines)

Angela-Claire Coutts
Communications Officer for Minister for Europe, External Affairs & Culture
Tel: 0131 244 2547

Notes to Editors:

Anthony d’Offay

Born in Sheffield in 1940, Anthony d'Offay studied art at Edinburgh University, graduating in 1962. Whilst at the University, he fell in love with the collections of the National Gallery of Scotland. Years later he described walking round the galleries on The Mound as “the defining experience of my life”.

In 1969, the year in which the gallery moved to Dering Street, he organised the ground breaking Abstract Art in England 1913-1915, which became an Arts Council touring show. Exhibitions followed dedicated to the largely forgotten period of English painting from 1910 to 1940, including Vorticism, Bloomsbury and the Camden Town Group. Scholarly shows included Jacob Epstein, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Spencer Gore, Gwen John, Stanley Spencer, Wyndham Lewis and Eric Gill.

Anthony d’Offay became interested in contemporary art and began to include shows by living artists in the gallery’s programme. These included Lucian Freud in 1972, Gilbert & George, 1972, Michael Andrews, 1974, William Coldstream, 1976, Eduardo Paolozzi 1977, Frank Auerbach, 1978, Richard Long, 1978 and Richard Hamilton in 1980.

In 1977 he married Anne Seymour, a curator with many years experience in the Modern Collection at the Tate Gallery, who had a special interest in avant-garde international art. In 1980 they opened a gallery for contemporary art 23 Dering Street, a uniquely large space for London at that time. They, together with Marie-Louise Laband, Director of the gallery, inaugurated a programme of international contemporary art, starting with a seminal exhibition by Joseph Beuys, Stripes from the House of the Shaman in August 1980. The intention was to show the greatest contemporary art being made, much of which was largely unknown to the British public at that time.

Over the years, the gallery in London presented a large number of highly acclaimed exhibitions by some of the greatest artists of our time. Many of these shows later travelled to public institutions in Britain and abroad. In addition to the shows made for the spaces in London, the Gallery was involved in organising important exhibitions for museums and public galleries around the world. The gallery closed in 2001.

Anthony d’Offay has brought many important exhibitions to Edinburgh including Joseph Beuys, Gilbert & George, Jasper Johns, Jeff Koons, Jannis Kounellis, Ed Ruscha and Robert Mapplethorpe. Most recently at the Royal Scottish Academy he initiated two major Festival exhibitions: in 2006 Ron Mueck attracted more than 125,000 visitors and last year’s Andy Warhol: A Celebration of Life and Death was seen by nearly 100,000 people.

National Heritage Memorial Fund

The National Heritage Memorial Fund (NHMF) is the ‘fund of last resort’ for the nation’s heritage, coming to the rescue by funding acquisitions in memory of those who gave their lives for this country. In recognition of the vital role it plays and to help meet an increasing number of applications, the Government initially doubled NHMF’s income from £5million to £10million for 2007/08 and recently confirmed this increased funding until 2011. For further information about the NHMF, please contact Dervish Mertcan or Alex Gaskell at NHMF press office: 020 7591 6102/6032 or 07973 613 820. www.nhmf.org.uk

The Art Fund

The Art Fund is the UK’s leading independent art charity. It offers grants to help UK museums and galleries enrich their collections and campaigns widely on behalf of museums and their visitors. It is entirely funded from public donations and has 80,000 members. Since 1903 the charity has helped museums and galleries all over the UK secure 860,000 works of art for their collections. In January 2007 The Art Fund successfully led the public appeal to save JMW Turner’s Blue Rigi for Tate, and in July 2007 was instrumental in putting together a unique funding package to ensure Dumfries House in Ayrshire was secured for the nation. Independent of government, The Art Fund is uniquely placed to campaign on behalf of public collections across the UK and led the campaign to extend free admission to all national museums and galleries, which achieved success in 2001. Visit the charity’s website at www.artfund.org. For further information about The Art Fund contact Hannah Fox, Head of Press, on 020 7225 4888, 07912 777761 or hfox@artfund.org

• FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS 2007/ 2008

Please find below our programme of exhibitions and displays for the coming months. For further information on any of these, please contact the Press Office on 0131 624 6325/314/332/247, or pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org

Information may also be found on our website
www.nationalgalleries.org

NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND
FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS 2007/ 2008

NOTES: Current as of January 2008. Information is subject to change.
**Denotes major summer exhibition

General opening hours:
National Gallery of Scotland Complex / Scottish National Portrait Gallery
Monday–Sunday 10am–5pm
except Thursday 10am–7pm

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art / Dean Gallery
Monday–Sunday 10am–5pm

 

BACK TO THE FUTURE:
SIR BASIL SPENCE 1907–1976
19 October 2007 – 10 February 2008
DEAN GALLERY, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free
A collaboration between the National Galleries of Scotland and the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland.

To celebrate the centenary of the birth of Sir Basil Spence, the Dean Gallery will host an exhibition dedicated to the iconic architect this autumn. Spence is arguably Scotland’s most renowned modern architect. His numerous buildings and his belief that modern architecture could serve all society propelled this Scotsman into a position in which he became a willing and frequent spokesperson for modern architecture in this country and internationally. His range of projects, which includes grand private houses (Gribloch in Stirlingshire), social housing (in Glasgow’s Gorbals), exhibition architecture (for the Empire Exhibition in Glasgow, 1938, and for the Festival of Britain, 1951), major public commissions (most famously the new Coventry Cathedral) and numerous university and civic buildings, affected and continues to affect the lives of many. The exhibition will be drawn from the extensive Sir Basil Spence Archive, which comprises in excess of 30,000 drawings, photographs, sketch-books, models and news cuttings. The archive was recently gifted by the Spence family to the Royal Commission for Ancient and Historic Monuments of Scotland with the aim of cataloguing and making it more widely accessible to the public. This exhibition, the largest ever dedicated to Spence, will be held as part of a larger series of events and workshops, aiming to foster debate on the architectural heritage of Basil Spence and on our built environment as a whole.

JOAN EARDLEY
6 November 2007 – 13 January 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission £6.00 (concessions £4.00)

The unique talent of Joan Eardley, one of Scotland’s most popular twentieth century artists, will be celebrated in this major new exhibition. The first large-scale retrospective of Eardley’s work for almost 20 years, the exhibition will include around 70 paintings and 40 works on paper, as well as photographs taken by Eardley and her friend Audrey Walker. Best known for her sympathetic depiction of children in the streets and tenements of Glasgow, and for her freely painted and dramatic treatments of the sea and landscape of Scotland’s north-east coast, Eardley is a major figure in the history of post-war Scottish art. This much-anticipated survey of her tragically brief career will bring together important loans from collections across the UK, including a number of works that have not been on public display for many years. The exhibition will offer a timely reminder of Eardley’s remarkable talent, and an opportunity for a new generation to see the work of this much-loved artist. It will also contribute to a wider re-assessment of Eardley’s contribution to British art in the last century.

MATERNITY
10 November 2007 – 12 January 2008, Monday to Saturday, 10 am – 5 pm
INVERNESS MUSEUM AND ART GALLERY, Castle Wynd, Inverness, IV2 3EB
Admission free

This new exhibition, based on images of the mother and child from the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, will open at Inverness Museum and Art Gallery this November. Comprising a selection of eleven very different images, Maternity will explore the theme of motherhood in art, and consider how it has been interpreted and re-interpreted by artists over the past 500 years. The works on show will range from the early Renaissance to the present day, and will include works by Sandro Botticelli, George Romney, William Quiller Orchardson, and Pablo Picasso. Maternity will feature one of the most touching examples of the theme in Western painting, Botticelli’s fifteenth-century masterpiece The Virgin Adoring the Sleeping Christ Child. Acquired by the National Gallery of Scotland in 2000, this celebrated painting, which is the earliest work in the display, combines a complex theological narrative with a very human depiction of a young mother and her baby. Maternity is presented in partnership with Highland 2007 and The Highland Council and reflects the National Galleries of Scotland’s active involvement with art and culture in the Highland region. This partnership underlines one of the Galleries’ core aims – making the national art collection accessible to the widest possible number of visitors.

INDIAN INTERLUDE
10 November 2007 – 3 February 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

A new display of artworks from India will open at the National Gallery Complex this autumn, to coincide with two dramatic milestones in the history of the subcontinent - the 60th anniversary of Indian independence and the 150th anniversary of the Indian Uprising. Indian Interlude is part of a programme of National Galleries events celebrating the shared histories of Scotland and India. The exhibition of 28 items will feature a number of works that have never been displayed before, and will include exquisite eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Indian miniature paintings from the National Galleries of Scotland’s permanent collection, as well as sketches of everyday India, drawn by British artists working there at the same period. These sketches and four related volumes are part of the Mrs Madeleine Sharpe Erskine Bequest – known as The Dunimarle Collection – a special loan to the National Galleries, and the core of displays at Duff House, the country-house gallery in Banff, which is run in partnership with Historic Scotland and Aberdeenshire Council. The exotic Indian paintings were collected by the Edinburgh bookseller and distinguished member of the Society of Antiquaries, David Laing, who left a collection of paintings in his will to encourage the establishment of a historical portrait gallery for Scotland. This was the forerunner of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Laing’s Indian portraits include stylised images of the Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb; the Nawab of Murshidabad; elegant, single figures, and groups of bejewelled women drinking wine on terraces.

BP PORTRAIT AWARD 2007
14 December 2007 – 27 April 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh
Admission free

For only the second time in its history, the BP Portrait Award exhibition will be shown in Edinburgh this year, where it will be the highlight of the winter programme at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Organised by the National Portrait Gallery in London, the BP Portrait Award promotes the best in contemporary portrait painting, by encouraging artists to focus upon and develop the theme of portraiture in their work. First established in 1980 – and in its eighteenth year of BP sponsorship – the award is one of the most prestigious visual arts prizes in the world. The main prize, which this year went to Glasgow-born artist Paul Emsley, carries an award of £25,000, plus a commission worth £4,000. The exhibition comprises a selection of 60 of the most impressive works submitted to this year’s competition, which attracted a record 1,870 entries. It will feature works by artists from around the world, including entrants from the USA, Germany, Norway, Israel and, of course, Scotland.

CAROL RHODES
1 December 2007 – 24 February 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition will celebrate the work of the highly regarded contemporary British artist Carol Rhodes. Born in 1959, Rhodes studied at Glasgow School of Art and emerged in the mid-1990s as a significant voice in contemporary painting. The largest survey of Rhodes’ paintings to date, this exhibition will cover the past fifteen years of her career, exploring the artist’s distinctive approach to landscape and intense investigation into her medium. Rhodes’ subject matter – flat, desolate environments, painted as though viewed from a great height – contrasts with the small formats she employs. The resulting images are powerful, dense and beautiful. Working in oil paint on board, she frequently depicts ‘functional’ landscapes that have been manipulated by human activity, but whose nature and purpose are not clear. Rhodes has exhibited regularly in the UK and USA, but her painstaking methods – distilling images from imagined, observed and photographed landscapes – have meant that it is rare for her work to be seen in depth. This show will allow a clearer appreciation of her achievement.

TURNER IN JANUARY: THE VAUGHAN BEQUEST
1 – 31 January 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

The New Year begins at the National Gallery of Scotland with its annual display of magnificent watercolours by J M W Turner (1775–1851), bequeathed in 1900 by the London art collector Sir Henry Vaughan. Turner is recognised as perhaps the greatest of all British painters, and was a master of watercolour painting, using the medium to create stunning land and seascapes, topographical views and designs for book illustrations. The Vaughan Bequest display is shown throughout January every year, and has been a popular feature of the Gallery’s exhibition calendar for more than one hundred years.

Keiller Library display
THE SCIENTIFIC ASPECTS OF SURREALISM:
THE WORK OF GRACE PAILTHORPE AND REUBEN MEDNIKOFF
12 January – 20 April 2008
DEAN GALLERY, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free

This display will be drawn from the archive of Reuben Mednikoff (1906-72) and Dr Grace Pailthorpe (1883–1971), which was purchased by the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in 1999. Mednikoff, a poet and artist who was involved with the British Surrealists, first met Pailthorpe, a psychoanalyst, in 1935. He introduced her to the use of automatism – the suspension of rational control which allowed Surrealist writers and artists to tap into the imagery of the subconscious – and encouraged her to produce her own drawings and poems. Alongside Mednikoff's works, these formed the basis of the couple’s research into the unconscious (in 1939 Pailthorpe published an essay on ‘The Scientific Aspects of Surrealism’ in the London Bulletin, the main outlet for Surrealist ideas in Britain). Chosen to exhibit at the International Surrealist Exhibition held in London in 1936, their paintings were singled out for praise by André Breton, the ‘pope’ of Surrealism, ‘as the best and most truly Surrealist of the works’ exhibited by British artists.

JOANNA KANE
THE SOMNAMBULISTS: PHOTOGRAPHIC PORTRAITS
FROM BEFORE PHOTOGRAPHY
22 January – 6 April 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh
Admission free

The Somnambulists will consist of a haunting series of photographic portraits taken from a famous Edinburgh collection of life and death masks. Using contemporary digital techniques, the artist, Joanna Kane, will reach into the past to bring figures from Scottish history to life. Animating her portraits to suggest an illusory sense of the living subject of the cast, Kane magically renders photographic likenesses from before the age of photography. The exhibition will pose questions about portraiture, the history and origins of photography, connections between photography and the life or death mask, and the influences of phrenology on art. It will continue the Portrait Gallery’s commitment to showcasing innovative digital work by emerging Scottish artists. The display will also include examples of life and death masks from the collection of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society.

REUNITED: RUBENS – RIBERA
31 January – 6 April 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

This display will offer the public a unique opportunity to compare two outstanding masterpieces of baroque painting – the National Gallery’s own Feast of Herod (c.1635-40) by Sir Peter Paul Rubens, and the extraordinary Drunken Silenus (1626) by Jusepe de Ribera. In the mid-seventeenth century the two paintings hung together in the palace of Gaspare Roomer, a fabulously wealthy Flemish merchant and financier based in Naples. Generously lent by the city’s Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte, the Drunken Silenus is painted with a startling naturalism that reflects the lasting impact of Caravaggio’s late works, which were also painted in Naples.

WARDER’S CHOICE
9 February – 27 April 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition has been selected by the National Gallery of Scotland’s warding and front-of-house staff. Responsible for the safety and security both of artworks and the visiting public, the warders spend much of their working day in the galleries surrounded by the collections, and many have a fantastic knowledge of and love for the works of art in their charge. For this exhibition the warding and front-of-house staff have been invited to choose their own personal favourites from the gallery’s collection of prints and drawings. The diverse range of works that have been selected reflects not only the breadth of our prints and drawings collection, but also the personal interests and tastes of each member of staff involved.

MIROSLAV BALKA: ENTERING PARADISE
1 March – 29 June 2008.
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free

Miroslav Balka is one of the most important Polish artists today. This display brings together his print portfolio Entering Paradise, presenting the traces of twelve anonymous men, with the contemplative video projection BlueGasEyes. Poignant and subtle, Balka’s works engage with notions of memory, identity and history, all the while pointing towards the frailty of the human body.

FROM SICKERT TO GERTLER:
MODERN BRITISH ART FROM BOXTED HOUSE
15 March – 22 June 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition will celebrate the lives of Bobby and Natalie Bevan and the collection of artworks that hung in their home, Boxted House in Essex, which became a gathering place for artists after the Second World War. It will include some outstanding examples of twentieth-century British art, as well as more unusual and private works, and archival material from the period 1894-1970. The Bevans lived at Boxted House from 1946 until 1974. Bobby (1901-74) was the son of the artists Robert Bevan (1865-1925) and Stanislawa de Karlowska (1876-1952) and was Chairman of the leading advertising agency S H Benson Ltd. The painter and ceramicist Natalie Denny (1909-2007), a renowned beauty and hostess, also modelled for artists such as Mark Gertler. Bobby and Natalie married in 1946. Together they created an exceptional home at Boxted. Paintings by Bobby’s parents and their friends, such as Walter Sickert, Harold Gilman and Charles Ginner, hung beside works by Bobby and Natalie’s own friends, including Christopher Nevinson, John Armstrong and Frederick Gore. The house became a gathering place for artists, particularly for those associated with East Anglia, such as John Nash, Cedric Morris and Lett Haines. This exhibition will celebrate the colourful character of Boxted House, its hosts, its guests and the works of art which filled its walls.

MATERNITY: IMAGES OF MOTHERHOOD
15 March – 22 June 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition of works from the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland explores the theme of motherhood in art, showing how the image of the mother and child has endured and been re-interpreted by artists over the past 500 years. The works on show will range from the early Renaissance to the present day, including examples by Sandro Botticelli, George Romney, Pablo Picasso and Christine Borland. This exhibition was first shown this winter at the Inverness Museum and Art Gallery in partnership with Highland 2007 and the Highland Council.

FACES AND PLACES
24 April – 20 July 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition will be organised by the Portrait Gallery in partnership with the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland, to highlight individuals who have contributed to Scotland’s heritage and built environment. Drawing on the collections of the two institutions, the display will celebrate the work of around twenty archaeologists, antiquarians, engineers, architects and industrialists. A range of items will feature in the display, including paintings, sculpture, drawings, photographs, architectural drawings, notebooks and sketches – some of which have never previously been displayed. The exhibition will coincide with the centenary of RCAHMS in 2008 and is part of the programme of celebratory events, which also includes the major autumn RCAHMS exhibition - Treasured Places.

Keiller Library display
FOCUS ON DEMARCO
26 April – 21 June 2008
DEAN GALLERY, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission free

This display will celebrate the completion of the Demarco Digital Archive Project and the public launch of the project’s website. This three-year project, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, is a collaboration between the School of Fine Art of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design (Dundee University), the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art and the Demarco European Art Foundation. The website will make accessible approximately 10,000 items (including photographs, documents and audio-visual material) from the archive of the celebrated artist and exhibition organiser, Richard Demarco. The display will feature a selection of archival material held by the Foundation and the SNGMA.

FANTASY AND FUNCTION: DESIGN FOR GOLDSMITHS
3 May – 3 August 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

This display from the Department of Prints and Drawings will feature around thirty intricately engraved designs for jewellery, tableware and ornaments. These fabulous designs, ranging from tiny grotesque fantasies from sixteenth-century France to dazzling designs for commemorative tablewear in the nineteenth century, were produced by highly skilled engravers and provided both inspiration and instruction for gold and silversmiths. They reveal not only the skill and virtuosity of printmakers but also the ambition and ingenuity of the craftsmen working in this field of the applied arts.

TRUE GRIT
May – September 2008 (details to be confirmed)
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh
Admission to be confirmed

This exhibition will examine the lives of individuals who were promoted as role models, through art and literature, in the Victorian era. With particular reference to the theories outlined by the writer and reformer Samuel Smiles in his 1859 book Self-Help, the exhibition will also critically re-examine what we mean by ‘Victorian values’. Drawn from the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland, True Grit will also bring together manuscripts and archival material from the National Library of Scotland, and a selection of internationally important artworks from other collections. Many of the exhibits, including material from the John Murray Archive recently acquired by the National Library, will be on public display for the first time.

**VANITY FAIR PORTRAITS: PHOTOGRAPHS 1913 – 2008
14 June - 21 September 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh
Admission price to be confirmed
Exhibition organised by the National Portrait Gallery, London
Sponsored by Lloyds TSB Scotland

Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008, will showcase some of the greatest portrait photographs of the twentieth century, which were taken for, or published in, Vanity Fair magazine. The exhibition will feature some 150 images from the high profile magazine’s early period (1913–36), which will be displayed, for the first time, with photographs from the contemporary Vanity Fair (1983-present). Vanity Fair Portraits will include celebrated subjects such as Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin and Jean Harlow as captured by legendary photographers including Edward Steichen, Cecil Beaton, Baron De Meyer, Man Ray and George Hurrell. From the magazine’s re-launch in 1983, the works of photographers including Annie Leibovitz, Helmut Newton, Bruce Weber and Mario Testino will be featured, depicting a wide range of subjects from Arthur Miller to Madonna. Vanity Fair Portraits will tour to Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles / LACMA (26 October 2008 – 1 March 2009); and the National Portrait Gallery, Canberra, Australia (12 June – 30 August 2009).

**FOTO
MODERNITY IN CENTRAL EUROPE, 1918 – 1945
7 June – 31 Aug 2008
DEAN GALLERY, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission £6.00 (concessions £4.00)
Organised by the National Gallery of Art, Washington, the Dean Gallery’s festival exhibition will explore the breathtaking success of modernist photography in Germany, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and Austria, during a time of tremendous social and political upheaval. The first survey ever carried out on this subject, Foto will include many stunning works that will be shown in Britain for the first time. The exhibition will be unprecedented in scope, comprising more than 150 photographs, books, and illustrated magazines. More than 100 photographers will be represented, and the exhibition will address topics such as photomontage and war, gender identity, life and leisure in the modern metropolis, and the spread of Surrealism. The work of internationally recognised masters such as László Moholy-Nagy, Hannah Höch, André Kertész, and El Lissitzky will be shown alongside that of historically important contemporaries such as Karel Teige, Edith Tudor Hart, František Drtikol, Martin Munkacsi and Trude Fleischmann. This will be the only European showing of this magnificent exhibition.

THE FACE OF SCOTLAND
5 July – 25 August 2008
KIRKCUDBRIGHT TOWN HALL, St Mary’s Street, Kirkcudbright
Admission free

As part of Kirkcudbright’s annual programme of visual art and craft events in 2008, this exhibition will present a selection of over forty major portraits on loan from the permanent collection of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Among the works featured will be Raeburn’s enchanting portrait of Walter Ross, The Yellow Boy – which was only recently discovered and has never before been seen in a public space. The show will also include portraits of a group of sporting greats including Eric Liddell, Jock Stein and Kenny Dalgleish. This partnership underlines one of the Galleries’ core aims – making the national art collection accessible to the widest possible number of visitors.

SOMETHING OLD, SOMETHING NEW:
DRAWINGS, PRINTS AND PHOTOGRAPHS
RECENTLY ACQUIRED BY THE NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND
17 July – 21 September 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition will present a rich and varied selection of the best works on paper and photographs acquired by the National Galleries of Scotland over recent years. The selection of approximately seventy works will span the period from the Renaissance to the present day, and will include a broad range of media and techniques. Among the highlights will be a vibrant sketch of the Holy Family by the eighteenth-century Venetian painter Tiepolo; an important early watercolour by nineteenth-century Scottish artist E A Walton; a contemporary pastel portrait of the actress Tilda Swinton by her husband John Byrne; spectacular aerial photographs taken by Alfred Buckham in the 1920s; a striking self-portrait by the celebrated American photographer Lee Miller; and Picasso’s harrowing etching Weeping Woman.

**IMPRESSIONISM AND SCOTLAND
19 July – 12 October 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission to be confirmed
Sponsored by Baillie Gifford

This major international exhibition will explore the Scottish taste for Impressionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and its impact on two generations of artists in Scotland. The label ‘Impressionism’ was, in this period, applied to artists as diverse as Whistler, Corot, McTaggart and the Glasgow Boys. This exhibition of over 100 works will include paintings, pastels and watercolours by these artists, as well as by Monet, Manet, Degas, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir, Van Gogh, Seurat, Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and the Scottish Colourists. Highlights of the show will include Degas’s L’Absinthe (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which was famously hissed at when it came up for auction in 1892, and Lavery’s The Tennis Party (Aberdeen Art Gallery), a rare example of Scottish modern life painting. Other major Impressionist works will be on loan from private and public collections in the UK, Germany, the USA and Australia.

**TRACEY EMIN
Early August (to be confirmed) – 9 November 2008
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh
Admission to be confirmed

Tracey Emin is one of the most celebrated artists of her generation, yet remarkably this will be the first retrospective exhibition of her work to be held in the UK. Born in London in 1963, she grew up in the Kent seaside resort town of Margate and studied Royal College of Art in London from 1987 to 1989. Emin’s work draws directly upon her personal experiences, and often refers to traumatic episodes in her early life (being raped at the age of 13, her sexually promiscuous adolescence and a failed suicide attempt). Her first solo exhibition, My Major Retrospective, held at the White Cube Gallery in London in 1993, featured embroidered blankets, letters, mementos and photographs relating to such experiences. Emin’s great achievement is to have drawn upon her background – the sort of background that a lot of people share, but which is largely uncharted territory in the world of art – and to have done so in a manner that is neither tragic nor sentimental. The forthcoming retrospective at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art will occupy the entire ground floor of the gallery and feature work dating from 1993 to the present day. It will include embroidered textiles, paintings, drawings, early unpublished prints, installations, photographs, sculptures, neon works and much new work, made specifically for the exhibition.

[working title]
FOOTLIGHTS:
9 August – 16 November 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission free

This display will feature works from the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland and will look at ways in which artists over the centuries have chosen to record events and performances. The show will coincide with the SIBMAS international conference, which will be held in Glasgow in August 2008. This is first time this prestigious event has been held in Scotland. SIBMAS (Société Internationale des Bibliothèques et des Musées des Arts du Spectacle) is the international association for museums and libraries of the performing arts. The display will also coincide with the International Festival and Fringe events in Edinburgh and will serve as a link between the visual and performing arts.

JOHN MUIR WOOD AND THE ORIGINS
OF LANDSCAPE PHOTOGRAPHY IN SCOTLAND
2 August – 26 October 2008
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition will be the first to investigate the origins of landscape photography in Scotland. It will concentrate on images produced between 1840 and 1860, and in particular on the work of John Muir Wood, arguably Scotland’s first systematic landscape photographer. With bulky camera equipment, Muir Wood travelled by steamer along the Firth of Clyde, exploring the geography of Arran, Bute and the north Ayrshire coast. The exhibition will engage with a wider specialist and public interest in landscape questions and will contribute to a reconsideration of the practice of early photographers currently underway in Britain and abroad. The exhibition will also contextualise Muir Wood’s imagery by displaying examples of the landscape practice of other early photographers, including Robert Adamson and David Octavius Hill, Thomas Keith, Horatio Ross and W H F Talbot. We witness the emergence of a new creative form as each struggled to express the Scottish landscape imagination through photography.

THE INTIMATE PORTRAIT:
DRAWINGS, MINIATURES AND PASTELS FROM RAMSAY TO LAWRENCE
25 October 2008 – 1 February 2009
SCOTTISH NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, 1 Queen Street, Edinburgh
Admission free

This exhibition will explore the fascination for intimate portraiture in Georgian and Regency Britain between the late 1740s and the 1830s, from the origins of polite society and the rise of the fashionable art world until the onset of the Victorian era and the invention of photography. This will be the first major show devoted to this great period of British portrait drawing and miniature painting, when artists such as Ramsay, Gainsborough, Cosway, Skirving, Lawrence and Wilkie produced wonderfully worked portraits in pencil, chalks, watercolours and pastels, as well as miniatures on ivory, that were intended to be hung as finished works in domestic rooms, or worn on the body to represent absent loved ones. This will be a unique partnership exhibition between the Scottish National Portrait Gallery and the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum, and will also draw on the collection of the National Gallery of Scotland. The exhibition will travel to the British Museum in London during spring 2009.

---

For further information on any of these exhibitions, please contact the Press Office on 0131 624 6325/314/332/247 or pressinfo@nationalgalleries.org
www.nationalgalleries.org

• NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND ANNOUNCE ARCHITECTS FOR PORTRAIT OF THE NATION

For immediate release: 24 January 2008

Photocall: 11.30 am, Thursday 24 January,
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Queen Street, Edinburgh

NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND ANNOUNCE
ARCHITECTS FOR PORTRAIT OF THE NATION

The National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to announce that Page Park Architects has been appointed to Portrait of the Nation, the ambitious project to refurbish and transform the Scottish National Portrait Gallery in Edinburgh. This £17.6 million project will involve the repair, conservation and creative adaptation of this magnificent Arts and Crafts building, which opened in 1889 as the first purpose-built national portrait gallery in the world.

Starting from an urgent need to restore the building, the project aims to forge an innovative and exciting new gallery. Portrait of the Nation will double the amount of gallery space within the building, and will reinvent the way in which the national collection is displayed, with a new focus on photography and Scottish art. The project will also create a range of enhanced visitor facilities and a new Education Suite, including a community gallery, art studios and seminar room.

Selected from a shortlist of prominent architects, Page Park is a thriving Glasgow-based practice, working across a number of sectors including public building, conservation, education, housing and commercial projects. The practice has a reputation for thoughtful and dynamic design, responding to what are often challenging and sensitive contexts. Its previous and current conservation projects include work on the Centre for Contemporary Arts, Glasgow; Glasgow School of Art; Rosslyn Chapel Conservation and Access Project; and St Vincent Street Church, Glasgow.

Work on Portrait of the Nation will begin in 2009, with a provisional completion date of autumn 2011. The aim of the project is to conserve and enhance the building designed by the celebrated architect, Sir Robert Rowand Anderson, in 1882. Page Park has been charged with preserving the integrity and coherence of Anderson’s design, which remains relatively unscathed. Twentieth-century interventions, including partition walls and lowered ceilings, will be removed and essential new interventions will be designed with a thorough understanding of Anderson’s original concept.

New features will be added to the building, including a mezzanine level in the south east and south west wings, and a new glass feature lift that will operate from the ground to the top floor. Improved access to the top floor will allow visitors to reach a suite of five beautifully proportioned top-lit galleries, while the transformation of previously underused areas of the building will lead to a 50% increase in public and gallery space. The ground floor will be remodelled to improve circulation through the building, and visitor facilities will be added, including an enlarged café, shop and cloak room. The new front entrance will be redesigned to become more welcoming and accessible and to cope with an increased number of visitors to the gallery.

The architects will work with the team at the SNPG to ensure that the design is sustainable. The project team will consider the design of the building, the way in which construction operations are undertaken and how the building is used and maintained to ensure that the National Galleries’ aspirations to incorporate sustainability and environmental considerations are fully addressed. The building will minimise energy consumption, achieve awareness of energy management generally and promote good standards of environmental practice. It will optimise the use of natural daylight and ventilation wherever possible, and the environmental control systems will allow effective energy management. The choice of all materials, services and equipment throughout the building will be based on the principles of sustainability and low maintenance.

Speaking of the appointment of the architects, James Holloway, Director of the SNPG, said: ‘‘I am delighted that Page Park are now on board. With the whole design team in place we are all looking forward to getting to work in earnest on this amazing project. We plan to use this uniquely resonant Scottish building to bring the story of Scotland - its peoples, histories, places and cultures - to the widest possible audience. The result - Portrait of the Nation - will be like no other gallery; it will radically extend the ambitions and national role of the NGS, consolidating Scotland’s capital as one of the top international cities for visual culture.’’

John Leighton, Director-General of the NGS, added: ‘‘We have been working on Portrait of the Nation for a number of years and are very excited to see our plans beginning to come together. We see this project as key to the realisation of the Galleries’ recently restated mission which places a much greater emphasis on our audience and on providing visitors with an experience that is both friendly and first-class. We have been very impressed by Page Park’s work in conserving sensitive buildings, and are looking forward to working with them, and the rest of the design team, in delivering our vision for the Portrait Gallery.’’

Last month the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF) and the Scottish Government pledged major contributions to Portrait of the Nation. HLF Trustees awarded the project a Stage One pass for £4,531,000 and development funding of £269,000. Linda Fabiani, Minister for Europe, External Affairs and Culture, announced the Scottish Government’s support for the project with a contribution of £5.1 million.

Notes to Editors

The RIBA Stage C design proposals presented in the Stage 1 bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund were prepared by a consultant team selected some years ago by means of competitive interview. Over the course of the last year, the NGS has undertaken a new selection process to procure consultants to take forward the Stage C designs. This procurement process has been in compliance with European procurement requirements for government-supported institutions. As importantly, the process has allowed the Galleries to ensure that we are now working with the strongest possible team to develop and deliver the project. In terms of the principal disciplines, Gardiner & Theobald as project managers and Page Park as architects have been re-appointed to carry forward their previous work. The team has also been strengthened in two areas. Davis Langdon, who worked on the Playfair Project (which involved the refurbishment of the Royal Scottish Academy Building and the creation of Weston Link), will take on the quantity surveying and cost consultancy roles. Harley Haddow, who provided a supplementary report on conservation conditions in our Stage 1 application, will be our new service engineers and will realise our developing sustainability ambitions.

The full team is as follows:

Project managers Gardiner & Theobald (Martin Sinclair)
Cost consultants Davis Langdon
Architects Page Park
Lighting designers Foto-Ma
Structural engineers Will Rudd Associates
Service engineers Harley Haddow
Fire engineers Buro Happold FEDRA

 

For further information please contact;

National Galleries of Scotland:
Michael Gormley t - 0131 624 6325 e- mgormley@nationalgalleries.org

Page Park:
Clare Mulcahey t - 07931 324802 e - wendy@wendyhouse.uk.com

- ends

• NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND ANNOUNCE BAILLIE GIFFORD AS SPONSOR OF MAJOR SUMMER EXHIBITION

Released: January 2008

NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND ANNOUNCE BAILLIE GIFFORD AS SPONSOR OF MAJOR SUMMER EXHIBITION

IMPRESSIONISM AND SCOTLAND
19 July – 12 October 2008
NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh
Admission £8 (£6)

The National Galleries of Scotland is delighted to announce that Baillie Gifford & Co, the Edinburgh-based investment management firm, is to sponsor this year’s major summer exhibition at the National Gallery Complex in Edinburgh.

Baillie Gifford & Co, which celebrates its centenary in 2008, will sponsor the much-anticipated international exhibition, Impressionism and Scotland. This exhibition of over 100 paintings, pastels and watercolours runs from 19 July to 12 October and will explore the Scottish taste for Impressionism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, assessing the impact of modern European art on Scottish art and artists. Highlights will include Renoir’s The Bay of Naples (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York), the first Impressionist painting to be bought by a Scot; Degas’s L’Absinthe (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which was ‘hissed’ when it came up for auction in the early 1890s, due to its ‘depraved’ subject-matter; and Sir John Lavery’s The Tennis Party (Aberdeen Art Gallery), a rare example of Scottish modern life painting.

Other major Impressionist works will be on loan from private and public collections in the UK, Germany, the USA and Australia. Artists represented in the show will include Manet, Monet, Degas, Sisley, Pissarro, Renoir, Whistler, Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Matisse, as well as the Glasgow Boys and the Scottish Colourists.

In the late nineteenth century Scotland was a powerful industrial nation and Glasgow was second city of the British Empire. A rising generation of rich industrialist and mercantile collectors developed a taste for avant-garde European art, many of them acquiring works which are now of international importance.

Initially collectors in Aberdeen forged links between the artists of the Hague School – the so-called Dutch ‘Impressionists’ – and Scots artists such as George Reid and William McTaggart. Many Scots collectors also acquired the work of Camille Corot and the artists of the Barbizon School; and in Glasgow – under the influence of the art dealer Alexander Reid – they were among the first to invest in the work of Degas, Manet, Monet, Renoir and Whistler. Pictures acquired by such collectors were frequently loaned to public exhibitions and were seen by contemporary Scottish artists.

Exposed to these works in the 1880s and 1890s, artists of the ‘Glasgow School’, such as John Lavery, James Guthrie and E.A. Walton, began to emulate their European contemporaries. They painted in the open air, depicting both rural and modern-life subjects, but they avoided the controversial café scenes of Manet and Degas. They were commonly referred to by critics, sometimes pejoratively, as ‘impressionists’, even though their essentially tonal style of painting was quite different from the ‘scientific’ impressionism of Monet and his contemporaries.

In the early twentieth century a new generation of artists emerged in Scotland – S.J. Peploe, J.D. Fergusson, Leslie Hunter and F.C.B. Cadell, later known as the Scottish Colourists. These artists all traveled to France and an early interest in Manet and Impressionism was soon superseded by a fascination with the decorative expressionism of Matisse and the ‘Fauves’.

After the First World War Scottish collectors learned to appreciate the Colourists’ brilliant colour and expressive handling and, partly through their influence, turned to Post-Impressionism, acquiring works by Van Gogh, Cézanne, Gauguin, Toulouse-Lautrec and Matisse.

This exhibition will highlight some astonishing parallels between the work of Dutch, French and Scottish artists, whose work will be hung side by side: Corot and Walton; Bastien-Lepage and Guthrie; Degas and Crawhall; Manet and Fergusson; Matisse and Hunter. It will demonstrate that, despite these influences, both at home and abroad Scottish artists developed their own instinctive brand of Impressionism, quite unlike the more analytical approach of the French Impressionists.

Baillie Gifford & Co, based in Edinburgh and employing 533 people, is one of the UK’s leading independent investment management groups with £55.5 billion of funds under management and advice as at 31 December 2007.

Alex Callander, joint senior partner, Baillie Gifford & Co said: ‘It is a privilege to be involved with this marvellous exhibition during our centenary year, an appropriate parallel as some of the pieces on display are around 100 years old.