Established | 1960 |
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Location | Edinburgh, Scotland, UK |
Coordinates | 55°57′03.09″N3°13′39.23″W / 55.9508583°N 3.2275639°W |
Visitors | 356,895 – Modern One 213,042 – Modern Two (2018) [1] |
Director | Simon Groom (Director) Anne Lyden (Director General) |
Website | nationalgalleries.org |
National Galleries Scotland: Modern (the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) is part of National Galleries Scotland, which is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Modern houses the collection of modern and contemporary art dating from about 1900 to the present in two buildings, Modern One and Modern Two, that face each other on Belford Road to the west of the city centre.
The Modern has a collection of more than 6000 paintings, sculptures, installations, video work, prints and drawings and also stages major exhibitions.
The first Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) opened in August 1960 in Inverleith House, a Georgian building set in the middle of Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden.
In 1984 the SNGMA moved to the former premises of the John Watson's Institution on Belford Road in the west of the city, a large neo-classical building which was originally designed by William Burn in 1825 as a refuge for fatherless children. [2]
Inverleith House became a contemporary art gallery, curated by the Royal Botanic Garden, also featuring exhibitions of works and specimens from its historic collections. [3]
In 1999, the SNGMA's collection had outgrown the Watson's premises, and it expanded into the Dean Orphan Hospital, a neoclassical orphanage situated on the other side of Belford Road which had been erected by Thomas Hamilton in 1833. The Dean Gallery was converted to a gallery by Terry Farrell and Partners. [2]
In 2012, National Galleries of Scotland underwent a rebranding exercise, and the two Belford Road galleries were renamed Modern One and Modern Two. [4] [5]
A further rebranding was undertaken in 2023, when the organisation's name was changed to National Galleries Scotland. The names of the individual gallery buildings were also renamed, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is now billed as National Galleries Scotland: Modern. [6]
Modern One, the former Watson's Institution building, presents works from the collection as well as a programme of changing exhibitions. The early part of the collection features European art from the beginning of the twentieth century, including work by André Derain and Pierre Bonnard, cubist paintings and holdings of expressionist and modern British art. Special highlights include paintings by Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso and the Scottish Colourists Samuel John Peploe, John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Cadell and Leslie Hunter.
The Modern has a renowned collection of international post-war work and an outstanding collection of modern Scottish art. The post-war collection features art by Francis Bacon, David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Joan Eardley and Alan Davie, with more recent works by artists including Douglas Gordon, Antony Gormley, Robert Priseman and Tracey Emin. The collection also includes ARTIST ROOMS, a collection of modern and contemporary art acquired for the nation by National Galleries Scotland and Tate with support from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, the Art Fund and the Scottish and British Governments. The growing collection includes works by major international artists including Andy Warhol, Louise Bourgeois, Robert Mapplethorpe and Damien Hirst. The collection includes the larger of Roy Lichtenstein's In the Car pieces.
The displays change on a regular basis.
Modern Two (formerly the Dean Gallery) is home to a changing programme of world-class exhibitions and displays drawn from the permanent collection. On permanent display is a recreation of the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi's studio, as well as his 7.3 metre-tall sculpture, Vulcan, that dominates the café. Modern Two is also home to the gallery's world-famous collection of Surrealism, including works by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Alberto Giacometti. The building houses a library, archive and special books collection. The library's great strengths are Dada and Surrealism, early twentieth century artists and contemporary Scottish art. The archive contains over 120 holdings relating to twentieth and twenty-first century artists, collectors and art organisations, including the gallery's own papers. The archive holds one of the world's best collections of Dada and Surrealist material, largely made up by the collections of Roland Penrose and Gabrielle Keiller. The special books collection contains over 2,500 artist books and limited edition livres d’artiste, again with a main focus on Dada and Surrealism, but also books by other major artists from the twentieth century including Oskar Kokoschka's Die Träumenden Knaben (1917) and Henri Matisse's Jazz (1947). This material is available to the public in the reading room, open to the public by appointment. There are regular changing displays in the Gabrielle Keiller library to showcase items from these collections.
Modern One and Two are set in extensive parkland, where visitors can discover sculpture by such artists as Ian Hamilton Finlay, Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, George Rickey, Rachel Whiteread, Richard Long and Nathan Coley. The lawn to the front of Modern One was re-landscaped in 2002 to a design by Charles Jencks. This dramatic work, or Landform, comprises a stepped, serpentine mound reflected in three crescent-shaped pools of water. The façade of Modern One is home to Martin Creed's Work No. 975, EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT . Modern One backs on to the Water of Leith river and walkway, which can be accessed by a long flight of steep steps behind the Gallery.
The Modern's director is Simon Groom, [8] [9] who was appointed in 2007. [10]
The National is the national art gallery of Scotland. It is located on The Mound in central Edinburgh, close to Princes Street. The building was designed in a neoclassical style by William Henry Playfair, and first opened to the public in 1859.
Modern art includes artistic work produced during the period extending roughly from the 1860s to the 1970s, and denotes the styles and philosophies of the art produced during that era. The term is usually associated with art in which the traditions of the past have been thrown aside in a spirit of experimentation. Modern artists experimented with new ways of seeing and with fresh ideas about the nature of materials and functions of art. A tendency away from the narrative, which was characteristic of the traditional arts, toward abstraction is characteristic of much modern art. More recent artistic production is often called contemporary art or Postmodern art.
The Scottish Colourists were a group of four painters, three from Edinburgh, whose Post-Impressionist work, though not universally recognised initially, came to have a formative influence on contemporary Scottish art and culture. The four artists, Francis Cadell, John Duncan Fergusson, Leslie Hunter and Samuel Peploe, were prolific painters spanning the turn of the twentieth century until the beginnings of World War II. While now banded as one group with a collective achievement and a common sense of British identity, it is a misnomer to believe their artwork or their painterly careers were heterogeneous.
The National Galleries of Scotland is the executive non-departmental public body that controls the three national galleries of Scotland and two partner galleries, forming one of the National Collections of Scotland.
Sir Eduardo Luigi Paolozzi was a Scottish artist, known for his sculpture and graphic works. He is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of pop art.
Modern Two, formerly the Dean Gallery, in Edinburgh, is one of the two buildings housing the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, one of Scotland's national art galleries. It is operated by National Galleries Scotland. It is twinned with Modern One which lies on the opposite side of Belford Road.
The Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (RBGE) is a scientific centre for the study of plants, their diversity and conservation, as well as a popular tourist attraction. Founded in 1670 as a physic garden to grow medicinal plants, today it occupies four sites across Scotland—Edinburgh, Dawyck, Logan and Benmore—each with its own specialist collection. The RBGE's living collection consists of more than 13,302 plant species, whilst the herbarium contains in excess of 3 million preserved specimens.
Charles Alexander Jencks was an American cultural theorist, landscape designer, architectural historian, and co-founder of the Maggie's Cancer Care Centres. He published over thirty books and became famous in the 1980s as a theorist of postmodernism. Jencks devoted time to landform architecture, especially in Scotland. These landscapes include the Garden of Cosmic Speculation and earthworks at Jupiter Artland outside Edinburgh. His continuing project Crawick Multiverse, commissioned by the Duke of Buccleuch, opened in 2015 near Sanquhar.
John Duncan Fergusson was a Scottish artist and sculptor, regarded as one of the major artists of the Scottish Colourists school of painting.
Samuel John Peploe was a Scottish Post-Impressionist painter, noted for his still life works and for being one of the group of four painters that became known as the Scottish Colourists. The other colourists were John Duncan Fergusson, Francis Cadell and Leslie Hunter.
Christine Borland is a Scottish artist. Born in Darvel, Ayrshire, Scotland, Borland is one of the Young British Artists (YBAs) and was nominated for the Turner Prize in 1997 for her work From Life at Tramway, Glasgow. Borland works and lives in Kilcreggan, Argyll, as a BALTIC Professor at the BxNU Institute of Contemporary Art.
The Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts (RGI) is an independent organisation in Glasgow, founded in 1861, which promotes contemporary art and artists in Scotland. The institute organizes the largest and most prestigious annual art exhibition in Scotland - open to all artists.
Inverleith House is a historic house, now within the Royal Botanic Garden, in the suburb of Inverleith, in Edinburgh, Scotland.
Art in modern Scotland includes all aspects of the visual arts in the country since the beginning of the twentieth century. In the early twentieth century, the art scene was dominated by the work of the members of the Glasgow School known as the Four, led by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, who gained an international reputation for their combination of Celtic revival, Art and Crafts and Art Nouveau. They were followed by the Scottish Colourists and the Edinburgh School. There was a growing interest in forms of Modernism, with William Johnstone helping to develop the concept of a Scottish Renaissance. In the post-war period, major artists, including John Bellany and Alexander Moffat, pursued a strand of "Scottish realism". Moffat's influence can be seen in the work of the "new Glasgow Boys" from the late twentieth century. In the twenty-first century Scotland has continued to produce influential artists such as Douglas Gordon and Susan Philipsz.
The Artist as Hephaestus is a bronze statue by Sir Eduardo Paolozzi, created in 1987. It depicts a standing human figure, a self-portrait of Paolozzi 2.64 metres tall, with the left foot advanced as if walking, holding two pierced objects akin to sieves.
Newton, sometimes known as Newton after Blake, is a 1995 work by the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. The large bronze sculpture is displayed on a high plinth in the piazza outside the British Library in London.
Gabrielle Muriel Keiller was a Scottish golfer, art collector, archaeological photographer and heir to Keiller's marmalade in Dundee. She bequested a large collection of Dada and Surrealist art to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art.
Victoria Morton is a Scottish contemporary visual artist who works in paint, sculpture and installation.
The City Art Centre is part of the Museums & Galleries Edinburgh, which sits under the Culture directorate of the City of Edinburgh Council. The City Art Centre has a collection which include historic and modern Scottish painting and photography, as well as contemporary art and craft. It is an exhibition based venue with no permanent displays.
Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair was a Texas ranch landowner.