New Arrivals

By Patrick Elliott, 18.08.2022

Graham Fagen (born 1966), The Slave’s Lament, 2015. Collection: National Galleries of Scotland. Gifted by Outset UK 2020. © Graham Fagen. All Rights Reserved, DACS, London 2021.

Funds are tight in all museums. And yet the remit enlarges constantly. There’s a big shift, rightly, across art galleries and museums, to collect and show a broader range of artists: more work by women artists, more diversity, more inclusion. And the ‘modern’ period expands with every passing day. When the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh first opened in 1960 its remit covered a 60-year period, from 1900–1960. Sixty-two years later, that period has more than doubled in length. Also, the definition of ‘art’ has expanded enormously since 1960 to include film, installation, performance, spoken word, all sorts.

But new acquisitions are the lifeblood of any museum and change is always needed if we are to remain relevant. How do you square the need for change with limited funds? The answer can be found in the exhibition, New Arrivals: From Salvador Dalí to Jenny Saville, which opened in November last year at the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) and remains on show until February 2023.

It occupies the whole of the ground floor of the gallery – all 12 rooms – and, with a couple of exceptions, is made up of acquisitions made in the past five years. There are about 100 works and each room forms a kind of mini exhibition. The spread is impressive, ranging from a rare watercolour by the ‘Glasgow Girl’ Frances MacNair to a rare early collage by Pablo Picasso and a film made by the American artist Amie Siegel over the lockdown period and finished just a couple of months ago. There’s Salvador Dalí’s famous ‘Lobster Telephone’, a major recent work by Bridget Riley, a room full of extraordinary works by Elisabeth Frink, rare monotypes by Naum Gabo, a landmark painting by Peter Doig (he regards it as his first major landscape), a Marc Chagall (the first in Scotland), a Toyen (the first in the UK), and a stunning Jenny Saville.

How do you do that when there’s very little money? It’s down to friends and supporters and the tax system. More than half the new acquisitions were gifted and most of the ones we bought were acquired with grants. The Henry and Sula Walton Fund has been a game-changer for us. World-famous psychiatrists who lived in Edinburgh, Henry and Sula really believed in the redemptive power of art – that art could change lives for the better. They left us a substantial fund which has helped us buy world-class works by Leonora Carrington, Dorothea Tanning, Gwen John, Picasso and many more. It was their fund that enabled us to buy the Jenny Saville. Their funding has often been matched by the marvellous, inestimable Art Fund, which contributed towards Dali’s ‘Lobster Telephone’, Leonora Carrington’s stunning ‘Portrait of Max Ernst’ and several other important acquisitions in recent years.

Another avenue is tax. When an owner of a major artwork dies, their estate can, in certain circumstances, offer the artwork to a UK public gallery ‘in lieu’ of death duties. It’s called the Acceptance in Lieu scheme and it’s run by the Arts Council of England. This scheme has enabled us to acquire works that would ordinarily be well out of our reach (the Peter Doig and Chagall paintings mentioned above, for example). And there’s a related scheme, the Cultural Gifts Scheme, whereby owners of major works can give them to a museum, during their lifetime, and receive a reduction on their income tax. This has led to works by Damien Hirst, Fred Sandback and Naum Gabo entering the collection. Artists have gifted works (Bridget Riley, Raqib Shaw) and organisations such as the Patrons of the National Galleries of Scotland, the American Friends of the National Galleries of Scotland, the Contemporary Art Society and Outset have helped us acquire other works.

The exhibition is not fixed. We are changing some of the rooms every few months, so visitors will need to come back if they are to see the full range of our acquisitions. And we still have quite a few stunning acquisitions to unveil before the show closes next February.

Highlights

Leonora Carrington (1917–2011), Portrait of Max Ernst, c.1939

Purchased with assistance from the Henry and Sula Walton Fund and Art Fund, 2018.

We have a world–famous collection of surrealist art, but had few works by the female surrealists, who played such a major part in the movement. This stellar work portrays Carrington’s then partner, the artist Max Ernst. The painting has temporarily left the New Arrivals show and can now be seen in a major show, Surrealism and Magic: Enchanted Modernity, at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice.

Dorothea Tanning (1910–2012) Primitive Seating, 1982

Purchased with support from Alison Jacques, London, 2021

The National Galleries of Scotland purchased a major painting by Dorothea Tanning, Tableau vivant (1954), from the Alison Jacques Gallery in 2019 (once more with support from the Walton Fund and Art Fund). Alison Jacques then very generously supported the acquisition of this rare and striking three-dimensional work in 2021.

Peter Doig (b.1959), At the Edge of Town, 1986–88

Offered by the Kennedy Doig family in loving memory of Bonnie Kennedy. Accepted in lieu of tax by HM Government and allocated to the National Galleries of Scotland in 2021

Doig was born in Edinburgh in 1959. This is a key early painting that grew out of a photograph that Doig took of a friend. It became his first landscape painting, in which nature comes alive, as if in sympathy with the melancholic mood of his friend.

Wangechi Mutu (b.1972), Histology of the Different Classes of Uterine Tumors, 2004–05

Purchased with assistance from the Heinz Fund and Art Fund, 2020

This landmark series of 12 collages is one of Mutu’s best-known works. Based on images taken from an old medical folio, overlaid with bits of fashion magazines and pornography, the collages explore themes of power and control.

Jenny Saville (b.1970), Study for Branded, 1992

Purchased with assistance from the Henry and Sula Walton Fund, 2017

Saville was a star student at the Glasgow School of Art in the early 1990s. She quickly attracted a global following. This is, surprisingly, the first painting by Saville to enter a public collection in the UK.

Marc Chagall (1887–1985), The Horse Rider, 1949–1953

From the collection of Andrew Stirling and Simonetta Stirling-Zanda, both of whom had a great fondness for the Scottish Gallery of Modern Art. Accepted in lieu of Inheritance Tax by HM Government and allocated to the National Galleries of Scotland in 2020

This is the first work by Chagall to enter a public collection in Scotland. It came through the acceptance-in-lieu scheme; the credit line was specified by the offeror’s family.

Salvador Dalí (1904–1989), Lobster Telephone, 1938

Purchased with assistance from the Henry and Sula Walton Fund and Art Fund, 2018

This is one of 11 telephones made by Dalí for his English patron, Edward James. The Edward James Foundation offered it at auction in London and it was sold to a collector abroad. Major works such as this have to go through an export license process and in this case UK museums were given the chance to match the price. Thanks to the Walton Fund and Art Fund, we were able to do this.

Bridget Riley (b.1931), Intervals 2, 2019

Gift of the artist, 2020

Many of our new acquisitions connect to our exhibition programme. Artists, galleries and lenders will sometimes donate works at the time of the show. We organised a major retrospective of Bridget Riley’s work at the Royal Scottish Academy in 2019 (it travelled to the Hayward Gallery in London), where Intervals 2 was first shown. The artist generously gave us the painting when the London show closed.

New Arrivals is exhibited at The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (Modern One) until 23 February 2023

This article was first published in Scottish Art News Issue 35.