NATIONAL GALLERIES OF SCOTLAND FORTHCOMING EXHIBITIONS 2008/2009
NOTES: Current as of October 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 HEROES 30 may - 7 December 2008
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh, EH2 1JD
Admission free 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.
national galleries of scotland art competition for schools 2008 13 June - 28 October 2008 NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission Free Sponsored by Scottish Widows This exciting exhibition - the
outcome of the fifth year of the hugely successful Art Competition for
Schools - features fifty-three winning artworks selected from thousands
of entries submitted by pupils from schools across
Scotland. There are six categories with different themes: nursery
schools (Birds); primary 1-3 (Can you see the music?); primary 4-7 (Sit
in Splendour); secondary 1-2 (Art to wear); special education schools
(Come closer) and group work (selected from any of
the above).
**Impressionism and Scotland 19 July - 12 October 2008 NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission £8.00 (concessions £6.00) 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: TWENTY YEARS 2 August - 9 November 2008 SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR
Admission £6.00 (concessions £4.00) 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 and neon works.
Footlights: Capturing the Essence of Performance 9 August - 16 November 2008 NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
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, EH2 1JD
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 St, Edinburgh, EH2 1JD
Admission free The first ever major UK exhibition to
examine a fascinating but relatively unknown aspect of British
portraiture will open at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery this
autumn. The Intimate Portrait will explore the
period between the 1730s and the 1830s - the heyday of British
portraiture - when some of the country's greatest artists produced
beautifully worked portraits in pencil, chalks, watercolours and
pastels, as well as miniatures on ivory, that were often exhibited,
sold and displayed as finished works of art. Jointly organised by the
National Galleries of Scotland and the British Museum, this exhibition
of nearly 200 works will draw upon the superb (and largely unexplored)
holdings of intimate portrait drawings in the
collections of both institutions, as well as upon important private
collections that have been placed on long-term loan at the Portrait
Gallery. Highlights will include masterpieces by Allan Ramsay, Thomas
Gainsborough, Joshua Reynolds, Thomas Lawrence and
David Wilkie. The exhibition will travel to the British Museum in London during spring 2009.
Keiller Library display EXHIBITING Surrealism: THE INTERNATIONAL SURREALIST EXHIBITION, LONDON 1936 13 September 2008 - mid December 2008 Dean Gallery, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DS
Admission free The International Surrealist
Exhibition opened at the New Burlington Galleries in London on 11 June
1936, and signalled the emergence of the British surrealist group.
Organised primarily by Roland Penrose, David Gascoyne and
Herbert Read - with the help of French surrealists such as Breton and
Eluard - it featured work by Dalí, Miró and Ernst, as well as by such
British artists as Paul Nash, Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland.
Lectures were given by both British and French surrealists:
Dalí dramatically delivered his while wearing a deep-sea diving suit,
but had to be rescued when he began to suffocate. It was a resounding
success with a bemused London public, attracting over thirty thousand
visitors during its three-week run. This display
will draw on material from the Gallery's extensive archives, which
fully document the progress of the exhibition.
PORTRAIT OF THE NATION 14 November 2008 - 31 March 2009 Scottish National Portrait Gallery, 1 Queen St, Edinburgh, EH2 1JD
Admission free This exhibition will describe Portrait of the Nation, the National Galleries of Scotland's major capital project. The exhibition will show how Portrait of the Nation will transform the Scottish National Portrait
Gallery with much more space and many more works of art on display. The
Gallery closes to the public on April 5 2009 for two-and-a-half years
and will reopen in November 2011. During the period of closure every
portrait will be removed for safety, the staff
will be relocated and parts of the collection will be displayed in
venues round Scotland and abroad. The exhibition will examine the
logistics of this large and complicated project and will give an idea
of what the gallery will be like when it reopens.
DUTCH MANNERISM 22 November 2008 - 8 February 2009 NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission free This display focuses on two major
acquisitions made by the National Gallery in recent years: Abraham
Bloemaert's splendid painting Miracle of the Loaves, and Hendrick Goltzius' extraordinary drawing of a Man with
a Tassled Cap.
Both are outstanding examples of so called "Dutch Mannerism". Goltzius,
as the most important artist of this generation, is represented with a
range of impressive drawings and engravings. Around these masterpieces
will be shown a selection
of fine graphic art by his contemporaries, Jacob Matham, Pieter
Saenredam, and Jacques de Gheyn. This display highlights little known
treasures of the collection and celebrates the dawn of the Golden Age
of Dutch Art.
GERHARD RICHTER 8 November 2008 - 4 January 2009 NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL
Admission £6 / £4; children free (12 years and under) Gerhard Richter
is one of the most influential artists living today. His paintings,
both figurative and abstract, with their superb mastery of technique,
strong conceptual underpinning, subtle ambivalence
and sheer beauty, have had a huge impact on several generations of
artists and helped to make painting once again a vital means of
artistic expression. This will be the first major retrospective of
Richter's paintings to be held in Britain since 1991 and the
first ever in Scotland. Drawn from a small, select number of private
collections, the exhibition provides an unrivalled overview of the
artist's career from 1963 to the recent past. It will include many of
his iconic works of the 1960s; based on magazine, newspaper
and personal photographs, these paintings helped earn him the label of
German Pop artist. Richter quickly moved on to paint abstract
canvases, which were to occupy much of his energy from the 1980s to the
present day. The exhibition will contain a group of
these magisterial paintings, which clearly demonstrate what a great
colourist as well as a master of formal control he was. This is a rare
opportunity to see in depth the work of one of today's great artists.
CHARLES AVERY THE ISLANDERS: AN INTRODUCTION 29 November 2008 - 15 February 2009 SCOTTISH NATIONAL GALLERY OF MODERN ART, 75 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DR Admission free Sponsored by the Friends and by the Patrons of the National Galleries of Scotland Charles Avery - The Islanders: An Introduction has been organised by Parasol unit foundation for contemporary art, London. A new exhibition of work by one of
the most imaginative, thought-provoking and highly regarded Scottish
artists to emerge in the last decade will be a highlight of this year's
winter programme at the Scottish National Gallery
of Modern Art. Organised in collaboration with Parasol unit, in
London, The Islanders: An Introduction is
the latest instalment in an epic, ten-year project which describes
through text, drawings, objects and installations, the topology,
cosmology and
inhabitants of an imaginary island. Inspired by his upbringing on the
island of Mull - and by time spent in Rome, and Hackney - this
exhibition brings together previously exhibited and new works,
including the Scottish premiere of the sculptural installation The
Plane of the Gods, purchased by the National Galleries of Scotland in 2007.
Also on display are several new works, including a large taxidermy
sculpture of a fearsome 'Ridable', an animal which inhabits the Island,
and a huge
wall map detailing the Island's territory. Charles
Avery was born in Oban in 1973 and is based in London. In 2007, he was
selected with five other artists to represent Scotland at the 52nd
Venice Biennale, as part of the
Scotland and Venice exhibition. Working across a range of media, this
exhibition presents a complex fusion of philosophical enquiry and
playfully inventive characterisation, executed with a distinctive and
commanding style.
TURNER IN JANUARY 1 - 31 January 2009 NATIONAL GALLERY COMPLEX, The Mound, Edinburgh, EH2 2EL Admission free The New Year begins at the National
Gallery of Scotland with its annual display of thirty-eight 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.
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For further information on any of
these exhibitions, please contact
www.nationalgalleries.org
________________________________ National Galleries of Scotland is a charity registered in Scotland No. SC003728
Registered address: The Dean Gallery, 73 Belford Road, Edinburgh, EH4 3DS. VAT No. GB270718360
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