Get behind the scenes of our big transformation with Heads Up, our blog of the Portrait of the Nation project.
Heads Up also offers a way for you to share your thoughts about the project with us and the wider world.
HEADS UP − A National Galleries of Scotland blog
Our First Port of Call
- When we reopen in November 2011 one of our inaugural exhibitions will be War at Sea. This will look at Scotland’s role in the naval engagements of the First World War when the two greatest navies the world had ever seen fought for supremacy on the icy waters of the North Sea. Glasgow Boy, Sir John [...]
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Shinty Appeal
- Most of my recent working life and indeed, dreaming time, has been taken up with our sporting exhibition, planned as part of the November 2011 re-opening programme of exhibitions and displays (around 639 days, and still counting). Nineteenth-century sporting works from the National Galleries of Scotland’s collection will feature, together with a number of loan works still to [...]
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The Ultimate Power Tools
- We’re now in week 14 of 78 of construction work at the Portrait Gallery. To illustrate recent events, here are some shots of the drilling equipment for the big lift pit. In order to get this very heavy duty machinery into the building, we had to dismantle carefully one of the ground floor windows – which we [...]
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The Motorcycle Diaries
- It doesn’t seem to matter how far you go, it is difficult to leave Scotland behind. Two days out of a motorbiking tour of South Africa last month (BMW F650GS for those who are interested), I came across a memorial to John Buchan that great writer of adventure stories and colonial administrator. This photograph was taken at the [...]
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Tim’rous Beastie Singular
- I’ve regained my composure just enough to write this post, having been ready to turn into a cartoon character with all the clichés - taking refuge on a desk, stock still with a pale face and speech bubble transmitting a scream, loud enough to wake John Knox. The reason: the smallest of visitors to the Portrait of the Nation offices, here at Baden Powell House, [...]
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