Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, together with the Dean Gallery, is home to the national collection of modern Scottish and international art from 1900 to the present day.
When the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art opened in 1960, it inherited a small number of twentieth-century works from the National Gallery of Scotland, but the majority of the collection has been acquired over the last forty years.
The collection now comprises more than 5,000 items, ranging in date from the late nineteenth century to the present. It encompasses work in a wide variety of media, from paintings, bronzes and works on paper, to kinetic sculpture and video installations.
Highlights of the collection include early twentieth-century French paintings by Bonnard, Vuillard, Derain and Matisse; Cubist work by Braque, Léger and Picasso; early twentieth-century Russian art, including oils by Larionov and Goncharova; and a superb collection of Expressionist art, with works by Barlach, Kirchner, Kokoschka and Nolde. The post-war collection includes work by Morandi, Bacon, Hockney, Lichtenstein, Warhol, Moore and Freud.
Twentieth-century Scottish art is especially well represented, with works by Mackintosh, the Scottish Colourists, Gillies, Maxwell, Eardley, Philipson, Davie, Bellany, Currie and Howson, while recent acquisitions include works by younger Scots such as Christine Borland and Douglas Gordon.
Dean Gallery
The Dean Gallery is home to some of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art’s important holdings.
In recent years, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art has made some outstanding acquisitions in the field of Dada and Surrealist art, principally from the collections of Sir Roland Penrose (1900-84) and Mrs Gabrielle Keiller (1908-95).
Penrose owned a superb collection of early twentieth-century art and was a close friend of many of the century's greatest artists. The Dean Gallery now houses twenty-six drawings and paintings formerly in his collection, including works by Dalí, Delvaux, Ernst, Magritte and Picasso. Gabrielle Keiller's collection of Dada and Surrealist art and her substantial collection of work by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi are also at the Dean.
In 1994, the Edinburgh-born sculptor Sir Eduardo Paolozzi generously gave a large body of his work to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, some of which is permanently on display at the Dean. This gift includes a substantial number of sculptures, prints and drawings, as well as numerous artefacts (books, toys, machine parts and other items) which have inspired his work.
The Dean Gallery has a remarkable library and archive and artists' book collection, covering the whole of the twentieth- and twenty-first-century art, but relating in particular to the Dada and Surrealist movements and Scottish Art. It is open to students and researchers by prior appointment only. The Gallery of Modern Art has a print room, consisting of over 4,000 works on paper, open to all by prior appointment.
