Annual Review 2011-12 - National Galleries of Scotland

Connecting Across the World
The National Galleries of
Scotland is very successful
at extending its reach across
the world, giving the opportunity
to promote and share
some of Scotland’s amazing
collections with a global
audience.
Parts of the collection reached visitors as
far and wide as the USA and New Zealand.
Loans travelled more locally around
Scotland and across the UK.
N E W Z E A L A N D
In March 2012 NGS sent a series of
works from both the Scottish National
Gallery and the Scottish National
Gallery of Modern Art to Auckland Art
Gallery, New Zealand. Degas to Dalí
comprised around eighty works from
the collection, offering the opportunity
to promote Scotland as well as NGS. It
was the first major travelling exhibition
to be hosted by the magnificently
renovated Auckland Art Gallery since
its reopening in September 2011.
Chris Saines, Director of Auckland Art
Gallery, commented: ‘I am delighted
to confirm that Degas to Dalí achieved
everything and more than we had
hoped for! It was, on all key measures,
an outstanding success for the Gallery,
attracting 98,944 visitors, close to a
record for an exhibition of its kind.’
C H I N A
The Tony Cragg exhibition, following a
successful run at the Scottish National
Gallery of Modern Art in summer 2011,
opened at CAFA Art Museum, Beijing, on
2 March 2012. Although the works were
not part of the NGS collection, the show
had been curated by NGS and was an
opportunity to promote NGS curatorship
and Scotland in the Far East. The exhibition
continued its journey to the Museum
of Contemporary Art, Chengdu and
Himalayas Art Museum, Shanghai.
N O RT H A M E R I CA
Titian and the Golden Age of Venetian
Painting: Masterpieces from the
National Galleries of Scotland
From 21 May to 14 August 2011, the
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston hosted the
final leg of a three venue exhibition tour
across the USA. Prior to this the show
toured to the High Museum in Atlanta
and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.
The Art of Golf
The second of NGS’s collaborative projects
with the High Museum of Art, Atlanta,
opened successfully on 5 February 2012,
the first leg of a tour which was scheduled
to travel on to Oklahoma, St Petersburg
(Florida) and Philadelphia.
E U R O P E
Venice Biennale
Every two years NGS works with Creative
Scotland and partner galleries to commission
and promote a chosen Scottish
artist at the Venice Biennale. In 2011 this
honour fell to Karla Black with a show
curated by The Fruitmarket Gallery,
Edinburgh.
This was a solo exhibition of brandnew
‘almost objects’, worked in situ into
exquisitely detailed aesthetic forms and
filling the Palazzo Pisani, a fifteenthcentury
Venetian palace. In this major
exhibition the works comprised varied
forms and compositions, in Vaseline
and marble dust, sugar paper and
eyeshadow, soil, powder paint and plaster,
polythene, cellophane and soap, in crumbling,
peeling washes or dustings of
varying colours.
Over 21,000 people visited the show.
Following its conclusion in November
2011, the Venice project continued back
at NGS with a series of education projects
programmed by NGS staff. These included
a performance evening for students at the
Gallery of Modern Art, as well as a series
of artists’ talks and a seminar on ephem-
AC R O S S S C OT L A N D A N D T H E U K
The main driver for our domestic touring
programme is the collection. We place
great emphasis on the effort to provide
nationwide access to our collection and
activities, achieving this through our work
with partner galleries, notably Duff House
and Paxton House. We collaborate with
a very broad range of other museums,
galleries and cultural and heritage bodies
across Scotland and the UK.
Opposite Tony Cragg exhibition in Shanghai.
© The Artist
Above The Golfers, 1847 by Charles Lees,
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
Purchased with the assistance of the Heritage
Lottery Fund, the Art Fund and the Royal and
Ancient Golf Club 2002
Below In the Car, 1963 by Roy Lichtenstein,
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art,
Edinburgh. Purchased 1980. © The Estate of Roy
eral artists’ materials.
Lichtenstein / DACS 2012
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