The Royal Scottish Academy of Art and Architecture stands in solidarity with our friends, partners and colleagues in Trongate 103.
One of the most important outcomes of Glasgow’s crowning as the European City of Culture in 1990 has been its reinvention as a city which embraces its cultural heritage and supports its cultural future.
It is well known in city planning strategies that cultural activity drives regeneration. Glasgow understood this and took considerable steps to expand and develop this strategy, establishing the city as a hub for innovation, art, design and culture after the demise of its heavy industry.
These industries once also fuelled a magnificent explosion of forward thinking in art, architecture and design, the resulting Glasgow School of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his circle continues to be world-renowned.
The spotlight has once again turned to Glasgow for its extraordinary position as a creative hub. The world looks at Glasgow as a leader in this field. But this reputation is easily destroyed and lost.
In the wake of the European City of Culture year, the city saw increased regeneration which enabled the development of Trongate 103 with the promise that the 25-year lease would stand.
This agreement is now being reneged upon and new tenancy agreements issued with a four-fold rent increase. This is unaffordable by the grass roots venues which call Trongate 103 their home – organisations which not only provide a service to artists and the community but support a wider ecosystem of artists, collectors and agencies. Trongate 103 is a beacon for Glasgow on an international stage.
We stand with the tenants of Trongate 103 today as they peacefully demonstrate their right to fair treatment. Let Glasgow flourish.
In 2026, the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA), one of the oldest and most prestigious cultural institutions in Scotland, will be 200 years old. An independent artist-led organisation with links to every part of Scotland and beyond, the Royal Scottish Academy is planning a unique celebration involving hundreds of artists, partners, galleries and institutions.
The full programme is revealed today, with events taking place across Edinburgh and the Lothians in 2026.
Set to be the widest reaching project ever of its type in Scotland, Celebrating Together features over 100 cultural partners coming together to mark the occasion with their own tailored events, exhibitions, performances, talks and collection rehangs across multiple venues.
A series of major exhibitions will also take place at the RSA in Edinburgh, from new solo shows to group exhibitions that showcase the RSA and its Members (Academicians) and New Contemporaries then and now in a series of new and enlightening ways.
Throughout the year, the RSA will also open up its Collections to partners across the network, with 100 artworks on loan to over 30 galleries, museums and cultural venues. Celebrating Together is supported by Museums Galleries Scotland.
HIGHLIGHTS:
Jessica Harrison RSA, Jasperware vase and cover with Pegasus finial and with reliefs of Apollo and the Muses, made at the factory of Josiah Wedgewood, Etruria, Staffordshire, ca.1790, 2015. On display in Origin Stories.
At the RSA in Edinburgh, the year opens with a number of exhibitions which look towards the legacy and impact of the institution. Origin Stories (24 January – 8 March) focuses on art tutors and teachers, and the web of artistic relationships that have evolved over the last two hundred years, tracing lines of influence from the nineteenth century to the present day.
Generation (24 January – 8 March) will trace the connections and routes of sixteen architects who formerly worked at the practice of Richard Murphy RSA, and have since gone on to establish their own practice. The Scottish Society of Artists (SSA) will highlight historical links between the society and the RSA within their 127th Annual Exhibition (11 January – 8 March).
Michael Agnew RSA, Three Scottish Owls for Megan Boyd, c. 2017.
Courtesy of the artist. Showing in A Real kind of Fiction at Linlithgow Burgh Halls.
Linlithgow Burgh Halls celebrates with two solo exhibitions, starting with Species Morphology – A Living Archive (23 January – 17 May).
Coming from a family of landworkers and game keepers, Stuart Mackenzie RSA’s exhibition explores the characteristics of nature and species, embedded in painting, drawing and printmaking. A Real kind of Fiction by Michael Agnew RSA (18 September – 24 January 2027) rounds off the programme.
Combining recent and retrospective work, Agnew captures the ‘Anina Mundi’ reflected in the owl as an archetype, alongside subtle and overt critiques of the contemporary world of ‘fast media.’ The programme will also include Homecoming by Leo du Feu ( 22 May – 13 September).
In February, the Scottish Society for Art History and the Royal Scottish Academy present a two day conference in Edinburgh – Scottish Art and the Academy (5 – 6 February 2026).
The conference aims to celebrate, explore and interrogate the RSA’s history and showcase new research on artists connected to it. It also aims to cast an enquiring eye over the idea of the Academy and its ‘official’ status, looking at those who may have been excluded from it or reacted against it at different times.
Ilana Halperin RSA, From Coral to Marble, 2014. RSA Diploma Collection.
Showing as part of What is Us and what is Earth at Fruitmarket.
Edinburgh’s Fruitmarketwill mount a major solo exhibition by Ilana Halperin RSA, titledWhat is Us and what is Earth (27 February –17 May). Halperin’s artwork explores the relationship between geology and daily life via media, writing, performance, printmaking, sculpture, drawing, and film.
At Dovecot, a show highlighting the work of Dame Elizabeth Blackadder RSA opens in time for Summer (opens 20 June). Blackadder was the first woman elected to both the Royal Scottish Academy (1972) and the Royal Academy of Arts (1976).
The breadth of her work in oil, watercolour, and printmaking techniques has long been celebrated for its new perspectives in contemporary art.
Blackadder collaborated with Dovecot across five decades to create over 30 tapestries and hand-tufted rugs. This exhibition will not only shed light on her illustrious career but also showcase her work in the context of the world-famous Studios.
Arthur Melville RSA, Homeward, 1880. Museums & Galleries Edinburgh.
Showing as part of Jean F. Watson: An Artistic Legacy at the City Art Centre.
Work that is gifted through a bequest (after someone’s death) is important to the story of Scottish art. There are many links to the RSA through these collections at institutions around the country that will be celebrated in 2026.
At the City Art Centre, Jean F. Watson: An Artistic Legacy runs across Spring and Summer (16 May – 4 October). Jean Fletcher Watson (1877-1974) was an Edinburgh resident who had a significant impact on the city’s cultural heritage.
During the 1960s and 1970s she presented a series of financial donations to the City of Edinburgh to develop a collection of Scottish art. Since then, the Jean F. Watson Bequest Fund has enabled the acquisition of more than 1,000 artworks.
Among the artists represented are many with links to the Royal Scottish Academy, including Anne Redpath RSA, Joan Eardley RSA, Leena Nammari RSA, and Alison Watt RSA.
Hill and Adamson, Ramsay and Rutherford from The Fishermen and Women of the Firth of Forth Portfolio, 1843-1847. The work will be displayed in an exhibition on Hill and Adamson at Studies in Photography, Edinburgh.
In May, an exhibition on Hill and Adamson will open at Studies in Photography, who will also host a seminar and book launch to coincide with the exhibition. As Secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy from 1836 to 1869, photographer David Octavius Hill shaped the institution’s identity and legacy. His partnership and work with fellow photographer Robert Adamson was a defining moment in the development of the photographic portrait.
Their work will be celebrated in the new book Hill and Adamson: The Fisherwomen and Men of the Firth of Forth, by Sara Stevenson.
This volume offers a fresh perspective on the pioneering work of David Octavius Hill and Robert Adamson, whose remarkable collaboration between 1843 and 1847 produced some of the most enduring images in the history of photography.
Their portraits of the fisherfolk of the Firth of Forth capture both the dignity and hardship of 19th-century coastal life.
Wendy McMurdo RSA, Avatar, 2008, City Art Centre, City of Edinburgh Council.
Wendy McMurdo: The Digital Mirror at National Galleries Scotland: Portrait (30 May – 25 October) charts 20 years of ground-breaking work of the pioneering photographer and Academician.
At a time where the digital landscape is changing faster than ever before, McMurdo’s work reflects on childhood, the online world, learning and make-believe in her largest exhibition to date.
Scottish Art Specialists Alice Strang and Chantal de Prez viewing the forthcoming auction. Image by Stewart Attwood.
Auctioneers Lyon and Turnbull also mark their 200th anniversary in 2026, and will host a preview of Scottish Paintings and Sculpture auction (31 May – 4 June).
With some 200 works of Scottish art on display, works by Academicians will be highlighted in the preview.
Dame Barbara Rae RSA, Antarctic Memory, 2024.
Presented in Barbara Rae: Charting South at the RSA.
The RSA in Edinburgh will host two exhibitions of important contemporary Academicians. Joyce W. Cairns: A Personal Odyssey (1 August – 2 September 2026) celebrates an important voice in Scottish art, as the first woman to be elected President of the RSA and an influential education to generations of Scottish artists.
Barbara Rae: Charting South (21 November 2026 – 24 January 2027) follows the hugely popular exhibition Barbara Rae: The Northwest Passage (2018).
This new body of work charts the landscapes and locations of Sir Ernest Shackleton’s ill-fated Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-17).
Dalkeith Palace. Courtesy of Dalkeith Palace and Country Park. Home of PhotoDalkeith 2026.
Celebrations in Midlothian and Glasgow will put photography into focus. Entering its second year, PhotoDalkeith 2026 returns to Dalkeith Palace, Dalkeith Country Park (September – October). Studies in Photography curator Julie Lawson and artist Calum Colvin RSA will co-curate on the theme of photography and the Royal Scottish Academy..
Summerhall Arts will host the RSA Moving Image Programme 2026. Painter and filmmaker Ronald Forbes RSA has curated a programme of moving image work by Academicians and RSA award winners. The programme includes a wide variety of work reflecting artists’ moving image practice in Scotland from the past and present. It includes work from the RSA Collection and work being made today.
As part of the year’s programme, Tonic Arts (NHS Lothian) teams up with Scottish NHS Arts programme partners to bring together a nationally touring exhibition of visual artworks created by Academicians, New Contemporaries, Award Winners and Exhibitors from regional health board and national art-in-health collections. The work will be showcased in care settings, creating uplifting and healing clinical environments for patients, visitors and NHS staff.
Further details of the programme across Edinburgh and the Lothians will be announced soon. This includes an exhibition of paintings by John Bellany HRSA at the John Gray Centre Museum in Haddington, and exhibitions at Edinburgh Printmakers and Royal Botanic Gardens Edinburgh.
In the Royal Scottish Academy building, a series of major exhibitions will also take place – from new solo shows to group exhibitions that aim to showcase the RSA’s vibrant and formative past, the pertinent present and a glimpse of a promising future ahead.
Their flagship Annual Exhibition (9 May – 14 June 2026) will have a special feel and New Contemporaries 2026 (28 March – 22 April 2026) will be a unique opportunity to Celebrate Together with Scotland’s schools of art and architecture.
The RSA’s website will be the main hub for the project, and will feature an interactive map and partners pages, which will enable audiences to discover everything that is happening in Celebrating Together across 2026.
Colin Greenslade, Director of the RSA, says:‘This ambitious anniversary celebration will bring partners and communities together to celebrate the cultural history and present influence and connections of the Royal Scottish Academy across Scotland and beyond.
“The RSA has long supported art and architecture in Scotland and, in its 200th year, is a dynamic institution run by artists, for artists.
“This bicentenary celebration offers a fantastic opportunity to spotlight our unique independent heritage, our connections to (and support of) Scotland’s contemporary artists and architects; and to pave the way for the future prosperity of the visual arts in Scotland.’
Sandy Wood, Head of Collections at the RSA, says: ‘2026 will be a joyful celebration that honours the history of the Royal Scottish Academy and looks forward to a promising future.
“The year-long celebration will help connect and celebrate RSA artists and architects, as well as established and emerging artists who have been part of the RSA family over the last 200 years.
“We’re delighted that so many cultural organisations across Scotland are joining the party and we’re looking forward to celebrating together in 2026. There’s still plenty of time to join in and we welcome contact with organisations and projects who’d like to be part of this special year.’
The Royal Scottish Academy was founded in 1826 to support artists and architects and promote art and architecture in Scotland.
They are an independent, non-governmental charitable institution led by Academicians. Royal Scottish Academicians are prominent artists and architects elected by their peers who govern the RSA on a democratic basis.
The RSA run a year-round programme of exhibitions, artist opportunities and events from their base at The Mound in Edinburgh. The RSA holds an historic collection recognised as being of National Significance to Scotland.
RSA x Art UK
A partnership with Art UK will act as a hub to draw together strands across Scotland and UK-wide and will also feature stories, curations and artist features that highlight RSA connections.
RSA x The Skinny
RSA are teaming up with The Skinny to deliver a series of bespoke advertising and editorial bicentennial showcases across print and digital platforms.
RSA x Jack Arts
Art will come to life across cities in Scotland withreimaginedRSA art works on creative billboards in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Perth.
The full celebrations will kick-off in January 2026. It’s a birthday party not to be missed.
In 2026, the Royal Scottish Academy, one of the oldest and most prestigious cultural institutions in the UK, will be 200 years old.
An independent artist-led organisation with links to every part of Scotland and beyond, the Royal Scottish Academy is planning a unique celebration involving hundreds of artists, partners, galleries and institutions across the country and with an ambitious programme at their Edinburgh home; the largest and most expansive yet, including a major focus on women artists past and present.
Today, the RSA are delighted with the exhibition programme for the gallery spaces in Edinburgh, including major solo shows with RSA members past and present, including Joyce W. Cairns and Barbara Rae, a celebratory Annual Exhibition, the annual New Contemporaries moment for emerging Scottish artists, as well as fresh takes on the institutions collection; curated by a wide range of artists and experts from the RSA and across the Scottish artworld.
RSA Director Colin Greenslade said: “I am delighted to share the full gallery programme for our 200th anniversary year.
“There is truly something for everyone; the finest in Scottish contemporary art and architecture, made by those just beginning their careers, through to those with a revered, established practice.
“For the Summer we have an important retrospective by Joyce W. Cairns and we round off the year with a major new exhibition by Dame Barbara Rae. As a membership organisation with threads of activity across the sector, our group exhibitions for 2026 will explore our history, our legacy and our future.
“Complementing the vast range of associated activities of our partners across the length and breadth of Scotland, the exciting programme for the galleries here in Edinburgh will be an opportunity to learn more about our extensive support of Scottish artists’ and architects’ practice during this important anniversary moment”
Curated by Richard Murphy RSA OBE, Generation explores the idea of the architectural family tree, bringing together the work of sixteen architects, all of whom formerly worked at the Edinburgh practice of Richard Murphy Architects and have since gone on to establish their own successful practices.
Richard Murphy acknowledges Ted Cullinan (1931-2019), Richard MacCormac (1938-2014), Isi Metzstein RSA (1928-2012), Glen Murcutt and Carlo Scarpa (1906-1978) as influential on his own practice. Now he is looking to the next generation to see how this legacy is continued.
Origin Stories
24 January – 8 March 2026
Everyone remembers their favourite teacher. For art students, the intensely creative environment of art school can make their tutors hugely important influencers and facilitators of their future careers.
Origin Stories will explore the web of artistic relationships that have manifested through the evolution of art teaching in Scotland. Since its foundation, the Royal Scottish Academy has put the support of teaching and training of artists at the heart of its endeavours.
Royal Scottish Academicians have been involved in the art teaching institutions that have evolved in Scotland over the last two hundred years.
Flowing from tutor to student, a fascinating lineage of influence can be traced from the nineteenth century to the present day, involving multiple interconnecting narratives via many hundreds of artists.
Curated by the RSA’s Head of Collections Sandy Wood, this exhibition will tell this previously untold story of influence and legacy, with artworks by some of the best-known names in Scottish art on view alongside those by emerging artists.
New Contemporaries (2022), artwork L-R Jack Whitelock, Jess Townley Hume, Josie Jones. Photo: Julie Howden
RSA New Contemporaries 2026
28 March – 22 April 2026
For 200 years the Royal Scottish Academy has been a champion of knowledge and education in the visual arts.
RSA New Contemporaries represents the Academy’s commitment to supporting and promoting emerging artists and architects in Scotland.
Now in its seventeenth year, it offers a unique opportunity to see some of the most promising talent in Scotland in one single, large-scale exhibition in the heart of Edinburgh. Supported by the RSA Blackadder Houston Bequest and showcasing 64 graduates selected from the 2025 degree shows, the exhibition is the best overview of the current outlook of emerging Scottish art and architecture.
The 2026 exhibition is convened by Michael Visocchi RSA, with assistance from his fellow Royal Scottish Academicians, and Architecture Convenor Christopher Platt RSA.
The 200th Annual Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy
9 May – 14 June 2026
The Annual Exhibition of the Royal Scottish Academy is the largest and longest running exhibition of contemporary art in Scotland.
A yearly barometer of Scottish art, the exhibition has been at the heart of the Academy’s activity since its founding in 1826. For 200 years, the exhibition has captured art and architecture at a moment in time, reflecting the world as it has changed with the Industrial Revolution, two world wars, the invention of the telephone and the birth of the internet.
The 200th edition of the Annual Exhibition will be a melting pot of contemporary art from across Scotland and further afield, with all artworks shown side by side in the Academy’s grand Neoclassical galleries in the heart of Edinburgh.
This year’s Exhibition Convenor is artist Annie Cattrell RSA, assisted by Architecture Convenor Fergus Purdie RSA. This significant year for the RSA also marks the tricentenary of the birth of James Hutton (1726–1797), the ‘father of modern geology’.
Reflecting on the RSA’s philosophical and physical foundations (with the building constructed on ancient volcanic rock), Cattrell’s curation will explore the RSA’s rich and layered development over time. She has invited artists interested in ideas of geology and the passage of time, including Martin Creed, James Geurts, Cathie Pilkington and Stephen Skrynka, to take part in the exhibition.
Architecture Convenor Fergus Purdie will reflect on the themes of identity and beginnings by inviting his fellow Academicians to design an imagined, alternative building for the RSA in Glasgow. Sam Ainsley RSA has been commissioned to design banners for the iconic columned façade of the Academy building.
Chaos & Control: Printmaking in Scotland Now
27 June – 26 July 2026
This timely survey exhibition will explore the contribution of printmaking to the landscape of contemporary art in Scotland.
Described by Niki de Saint Phalle as ‘controlled chaos,’ printmaking encourages collaboration, offering artists opportunities to share knowledge and working practices.
Printmaking studios have been community hubs for artists in Scotland since the first open access workshops opened in the 1960s and 70s. Whilst other visual arts organisations have struggled to secure funding and support in Scotland in recent years, printmaking studios continue to thrive, with strong artist-led memberships and affordable art at the centre of their purpose.
Curated by acclaimed printmaker Ade Adesina RSA and the RSA’s Head of Programme Flora La Thangue, the exhibition will give visitors the opportunity to view artworks by the foremost names in contemporary Scottish printmaking, as well as lesser-known and emerging artists pushing the boundaries of contemporary printmaking techniques.
Joyce W. Cairns: A Personal Odyssey
1 August – 2 September 2026
The Royal Scottish Academy will mount a wide-reaching exhibition exploring the career of acclaimed artist Joyce W. Cairns as part of its 200th anniversary celebrations.
As the first woman to be elected President of the RSA and an influential educator to generations of Scottish artists, Cairns has long been an important voice in Scottish art. A major exhibition of her practice is long overdue.
Joyce W. Cairns PPRSA, Bonjour Matelot
This exhibition will explore major bodies of work from across Cairns’ career, with the haunting characters of her Aberdeen harbour scenes on view alongside monumental paintings from her seminal War Tourist project.
Early works from the artist’s days as a student at Gray’s School of Art will be on view alongside her distinctive figurative painting, pulling from memories of her childhood and her home in the once fishing village of Footdee.
The exhibition will trace the progression of Cairns’ intensely personal, autobiographical style of painting and position her as a linchpin in the trajectory of contemporary Scottish art.
Born in Edinburgh, Joyce W. Cairns PPRSA studied painting at Gray’s School of Art, Aberdeen (1966-71), and at the Royal College of Art (1971-74).
Following a fellowship at Gloucester College of Art and Design, she studied at Goldsmiths College, University of London. In 1976 she returned to Aberdeen to teach Drawing and Painting at Gray’s until 2004 when she left to complete a substantial body of work culminating in the exhibition War Tourist at Aberdeen Art Gallery. Cairns was President of the Royal Scottish Academy from 2018 to 2022.
This 26: Contemporary Scottish Art and the Academy
12 September – 11 October 2026
Every year the Royal Scottish Academy supports hundreds of artists through awards, residencies, exhibitions and scholarships.
Since the start of this century, the Academy has given over £5.5 million to artists, many of whom have used the financial support as a springboard for professional success and artistic acclaim.
Curated by Edward Summerton RSA and Amy Cameron, This 26 will look at the recent history of the RSA’s artist opportunity programme, presenting works by 26 artists, one selected for each year of this century so far.
200 Years
17 October – 15 November 2026
Taking cue from the 200th anniversary of the founding of the Royal Scottish Academy, 200 Years will celebrate the rich history of Scottish art in all its forms over the last two centuries.
Reflecting the centrality of the Academy to the development of Scottish art, the exhibition will include works created by Royal Scottish Academicians since its founding in 1826.
The exhibition will give visitors the opportunity to explore paintings, sculptures, drawings and prints by the foremost artists working in Scotland over the last 200 years.
James Good Tunny, Interior of the Great [Octagon] Room in the shared National Gallery, RSA Annual Exhibition 1860, RSA Collections
Ade Adesina RSA in front of Revolver II and Revolver III, Photo Alan Dimmick
Barbara Rae: Charting South
21 November 2026 – 24 January 2027
In the wake of the hugely popular exhibition Barbara Rae: The Northwest Passage in 2018, the Royal Scottish Academy will present a major, new exhibition.
The Northwest Passage was the culmination of Barbara Rae’s travels following in the footsteps of her namesake, the explorer John Rae. The resulting body of work drew on the intense colour and light of the Arctic in monumental, luminous paintings.
Her interest piqued by the history of exploration, in late 2022 Rae took her work from one pole to the other, travelling to Antarctica to trace the ill-fated journey of explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton during the Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-17).
This exhibition presents a significant body of new work by Rae, relating to locations along Shackleton’s route, including South Georgia and Elephant Island.
Born in Falkirk, Dame Barbara Rae RSA RA studied painting at Edinburgh College of Art (1961-1965). Travelling to France and Spain on a postgraduate scholarship, her early work drew upon trends of abstraction and mixed media practices in European art at the time.
Since her first solo exhibition in Edinburgh in 1967, she has gone on to exhibit worldwide. She was elected Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1980 and became a full Member in 1992.
In 1996 she was elected a Member of the Royal Academy. She holds honorary doctorates from Napier University, Aberdeen University and the University of St Andrews; and is an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College.
Barbara Rae was made a dame in the New Year’s Honours 2025.
Dame Barbara Rae RA RSA in front of her work Exit (2015), photo Gareth Wardell.
This summer, the largest ever indoor exhibition by Andy Goldsworthy will take over the National Galleries of Scotland in the heart of Edinburgh.
Featuring over 200 works, the show will include major installations made in response to the iconic Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) building, as well as drawings, photographs, films, sketchbooks and archival items dating back to the mid-1970s and spanning fifty years.
Sure to be one of the most talked-about art events of the year and only to be seen in Edinburgh. Brought to you by the National Galleries of Scotland, Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years opens on 26 July 2025. Tickets are on sale now.
Born in England in 1956, and based in Dumfriesshire, Scotland, for the past four decades, Goldsworthy is internationally recognised for his work with natural materials such as clay, stones, reeds, branches, leaves, snow and ice. Over fifty years, he has created a unique and highly influential body of work that speaks of our relationship with the land. In Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years the land is brought indoors, into Scotland’s capital city.
Working as a teenager on farms near Leeds in Yorkshire, where he grew up, Goldsworthy developed a passion for working with the land: harrowing the fields, bailing hay, picking out and piling stones, feeding cows and sheep.
This is where he acquired many of the skills he uses in his practice today: cutting, digging, gathering, stacking, building. Goldsworthy then studied art at Bradford and Preston, while based in Morecombe Bay. It was there that he began making ephemeral works in the sand, recording what he made in photographs and film.
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years has been conceived by the artist as a single immersive artwork in response to the space, materials and character of the RSA building. Occupying all of the upper rooms and most of the lower floor, the exhibition is at once beautiful and ambitious in scale.
The interrelationship of humans and the working land is a recurrent theme in Goldsworthy’s art and in the exhibition. He often presents the land as a hard, hostile and brutal place. Fences and barriers feature prominently, in the form of rusted barbed wire stretched across a room, and a massive, cracked clay wall. As in nature, beauty and danger co-exist.
In dialogue with the oak floor, the vast 20-metre-long Oak Passage fills the largest room, with hundreds of oak branches forming a narrow path through its centre. Made from the leftovers of windfallen trees, the passage acts as a reminder that the gallery floor was once a tree, and that a building is part of nature – just as we are.
Another highlight is the floor of one large room which is entirely covered with stones left over from gravedigging – collected from over 100 graveyards in Dumfriesshire. With this new work, Goldsworthy explores the metaphorical correlation between the body and the earth.
When a body is buried, the body takes the place of the stones, and the stones take the place of the body. At the other end of the sculpture court, in contrast, a room will contain 10,000 reeds suspended from a halo on the ceiling. They will appear to rain down from the sky and float above the gallery floor at the same time.
Red Flags was originally created for the main square in the Rockefeller Center in New York and installed there for a month in September 2020. The fifty large canvas flags, individually stained with red earth collected from each of the fifty US states, refer equally to difference and similarity, a work, in the words of artist, ‘that talks of connection and not division.’
The colour red features in many of Goldsworthy’s works in the exhibition, referencing blood and the iron content which makes blood red – another connection between our bodies and the land.
Themes of access to the land and the right to roam have informed Goldsworthy’s work. Another new sculpture, which stretches up the impressive entrance stair at the RSA, is made of sheep fleeces marked with the colour codes of different farmers.
While Andy Goldsworthy is one of the most celebrated figures in contemporary art, his work is seldom seen in exhibitions. He has completed outdoor commissions all around the world, from the Arctic Circle to Tasmania, but the inclusion of his work in museum shows is rare.
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is by far the largest and most ambitious indoor exhibition of his work ever attempted. Conceived by the artist specifically for the RSA building in Edinburgh, never seen before and never to be seen again, this exhibition is set to cement Goldsworthy’s position as one of the leading artists of our time.
Andy Goldsworthy, says: “The show has come at a particular time for me. I don’t think I’ve ever had an exhibition that has paralleled the work that I’m making in the landscape here in Scotland.
“That’s because the RSA is not far from where I live, so I have been able to make work in Dumfriesshire alongside visits to the RSA, which has become connected to what I am doing outside. I couldn’t have done this exhibition anywhere else. Actually, describing it as an exhibition seems wrong – it is a work in its own right.”
Anne Lyden, Director-General at the National Galleries of Scotland, says: “Andy Goldsworthy is a unique artist, he has such vision, and his work is extraordinarily beautiful.
“Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is incredibly special, bringing the land indoors, and only at the National Galleries of Scotland. I’m so excited for everyone in Edinburgh to have the opportunity to visit this wonderful exhibition this summer.”
Andy Goldsworthy: Fifty Years is a National Galleries Scotland exhibition at the Royal Scottish Academy building, opening on 26 July 2025. Tickets are on sale now!
Indulge your wanderlust at the National Galleries of Scotland’s summer exhibition, An Irish Impressionist: Lavery on Location, opening this Saturday (20 July) at the Royal Scottish Academy building in Edinburgh.
Dip your toes in the sun, sea and society of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, viewed through over 90 works by renowned Glasgow Boy, Sir John Lavery. Lavery on Location brings together an array of the Irish impressionists most notable paintings, including many works not usually seen by the public and nearly 20 paintings exclusively on display in Edinburgh.
Take a trip through the extraordinary life of the Belfast-born artist, Lavery (1856-1941), from Scotland to New York via Paris and Morocco. Lavery never travelled without his painting kit, and An Irish Impressionist: Lavery on Location explores some of the locations he visited and was inspired to paint.
Move through the exhibition to experience the glamour of a lost era, with visits to the races, tennis matches and the golf course, or simply relaxing on warm days with Lavery’s family and friends.
See sumptuous portraits, impressionistic landscapes and idyllic scenes of leisure against a backdrop of Tangier, St Jean de Luz, Palm Springs and the Venice Lido. Be whisked away to Switzerland, Spain, Ireland and Italy, as well as to cities such as Glasgow, Seville, Monte Carlo and New York.
Indulge in beautiful seascapes of Tangier from the Ulster Museum, as well as spectacular portraits such as Idonia in Morocco from Glasgow Museums and Hazel in Black and Gold from the Laing Art Gallery.
From the highly finished to the swift impressionist sketch and a uniquely personal style, the range of subjects on show is staggering.
Born in Belfast, where his father ran a small wine and spirits shop in North Queen Street, Lavery was orphaned at the age of three, and moved to his uncle’s farm at Moira before being sent as a ten-year-old to a distant relative in Saltcoats, Ayrshire. He first ran away to Glasgow at the age of 15 and went on to take early morning and evening drawing lessons at the Haldane Academy, completing his training at the Académie Julian in Paris.
Along with a number of his fellow Scottish students Lavery worked at the colony of Grez-sur-Loing, near Fontainebleau, which will be the focus of the first room of An Irish Impressionist: Lavery on Location. Then, back in Scotland in 1885 he became one of the leaders of the much-loved group of artists known as the Glasgow Boys. The Glasgow Boys rebelled against the stuffy Edinburgh-based art establishment and challenged the Academy’s emphasis on historical painting. Instead, their subjects were drawn from everyday life, often painted outdoors.
Lavery quickly attained an international reputation in his early 30s when he received a gold medal at the Paris Salon, the most prestigious art exhibition in the world at the time. Enjoying great success after his move to London in 1896, Lavery combined his talents as a portrait painter with an interest in contemporary events and was later knighted in 1918.
As his style developed Lavery began to share some of the principal tenets of Impressionism. The movement was developed in France in the nineteenth century and is based on the practice of painting outdoors and on the spot. Using lively brushstrokes, these artists often produced works of art rapidly in a single sitting. Like Lavery, the Impressionists were interested in capturing the changing effects of light, frequently exploring this through landscape scenes painted in the open air.
With seven themed rooms, An Irish Impressionist: Lavery on Location will allow visitors to immerse themselves in Lavery’s oil sketches for the Glasgow International Exhibition of 1888, where he had his big break and was commissioned to paint the State Visit of Her Majesty, Queen Victoria.
Journey through Lavery’s travels in North Africa, with mesmerising paintings of snake charmers and camps on his adventures to Fez. For over twenty years, his villa in Tangier, surrounded by beautiful gardens, would become a winter retreat.
Then experience Lavery’s time as an Official War Artist with scenes in hospitals, submarine pens and air raids during World War I. In the final room you can experience the luxurious lifestyle of post-war society, including visiting the Henley Regatta and racing at Ascot.
Lavery experienced enormous social, political and technological change during his lifetime, yet, despite his travels and worldly experience, Lavery’s connections to home – to Scotland and Ireland – remained strong throughout his long career.
Senior Curator Prof. Frances Fowle said: ‘Lavery was a versatile painter who was equally at home in Scotland, North Africa and the French Riviera.“His paintings offer, on the one hand, a nostalgic glimpse of a bygone era and, on the other, a modern world of sunshine and leisure.
“Technically he was a true impressionist, intent on capturing a particular moment or atmospheric effect – perhaps night falling on Tangier, or early morning light, dancing on the crest of a wave.”
Guest Curator Kenneth McConkey said: ‘In a career that spanned over sixty years, Lavery’s output was immense. He saw carthorses become ‘horse-power’, windjammers transform into steamers, and flying machines reborn as air liners.
“Against a backdrop of immense social and political change, in the land of his birth, he witnessed the first cracks in the British Imperial entablature. Visual reporting skills, perfected in Scotland, took him to extraordinary situations and while his works develop in fascinating ways, their basic premises – setting down what was before him – remained constant.
“The same remarkable hand that brought us a Dutch Cocoa House in 1888 takes us to a tea-table in Palm Springs in 1938.”
This exhibition is organised by the National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin, in collaboration with National Museums NI and the National Galleries of Scotland.
This summer, the biggest ever exhibition of Sir Grayson Perry’s work will take place at the National Galleries of Scotland.
Covering his 40-year career, Grayson Perry: Smash Hits will take over the Upper Galleries of the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh from 22 July until 12 November. This will be the only opportunity to see this exhibition, which offers an exclusive look at the celebrated artist’s lifetime of creation.
Perry has gone from taking evening classes in pottery to winning the Turner Prize, presenting television programmes on Channel 4 and writing acclaimed books. Always keen to do the unexpected, pottery allowed him the opportunity to indulge his fascination with sex, punk, and counterculture amongst other things, in the most unlikely and polite of art forms.
Today, he is one of Britain’s most celebrated artists and cultural figures. Grayson Perry: Smash Hits not only includes his most famous works, but also the first pieces he made as a student in Portsmouth. One such treasure is Perry’s earliest plate, made during his first week at evening class, Kinky Sex (1983).
This comprehensive exhibition, which encompasses more than eighty works, has been developed in close collaboration with the artist and Victoria Miro gallery. Instead of being presented chronologically, the show offers a journey through the main themes of Perry’s provocative art, including masculinity, sexuality, class, religion, politics and identity.
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits will display subversive pots, intricate prints, elaborate sculpt sculptures, and huge, captivating tapestries – all imbued with Perry’s sharp wit and social commentary.
Grayson Perry: Smash Hits will bring together all the artist’s meticulously detailed prints and imaginary maps. The exhibition will feature many of his tapestries, such as the rarely shown Walthamstow Tapestry (2009) which, at 15-metres in length, presents a birth-to-death journey through shopping and brand names.
Visitors will also encounter the intricate cast-iron ship, Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman (2011) which was the centrepiece of Perry’s 2011 exhibition of the same name at the British Museum. The tomb is a memorial to all the anonymous craftsmen of history.
Two rooms centre on the monumental tapestry series: Vanity of Small Differences (2012), which focus on class and are loosely based on William Hogarth’s A Rake’s Progress, as well as House for Essex tapestries (2015), which explore the life of a fictional Essex woman Julie Cope.
The final room will exhibit new works made in the past few months especially for the exhibition. These include a richly detailed tapestry, a large woodcut print, and pots and plates which explore themes of national identity.
Perry’s latest pots, in the form of medieval beer flagons, are decorated with traditional slipware techniques and reference subjects ranging from the polarising effect of internet debate to heraldic iconography.
This room will also include objects chosen from his recent Channel 4 docuseries Grayson Perry’s Full English. Perry travelled around the country to try and uncover what Englishness means today. He invited interviewees to select personal items which to them represented Englishness.
Piqued by the opportunity to show some of these items, alongside his new works on Englishness in Scotland, Perry has included various objects from a pub sign to a football flag, and a teacup to a letter from the Queen.
Grayson Perry said:‘I feel honoured, excited and also daunted by the thought of seeing the largest ever exhibition of my work this summer in Edinburgh.
“Honoured to be given such an opportunity in such a fine gallery, excited to share my smash hits with the Scottish audience and the festival crowds. Daunted because whenever I walk amongst a substantial show of my art the same thought floods into my head, ‘oh my god the man hours!’
“Just one of the grand rooms like those of the Royal Scottish Academy could easily hold two, three, four years of my studio life such is the density of my works. These objects contain so much for me, my hopes, my ideas, my lusts, my laughter, my pride, my love. What they contain more than anything is my time. Forty smashing years.’
John Leighton, Director-General of the National Galleries of Scotland, said: ‘This exhibition, the biggest Grayson Perry show ever held anywhere in the world, offers a unique opportunity for visitors to discover the scope of the artist’s practice.
“It has been forty years since Perry first started making his pots and plates, and twenty years since he gained international acclaim when he won the Turner Prize; it is the ideal moment to celebrate Perry’s achievements to date.’
TURNER IN JANUARY 1 January – 31 January 2023, open daily 10am – 5pm Royal Scottish Academy The Mound, Edinburgh. EH2 2EL 0131 624 6200 | nationalgalleries.org Admission free
Opening on New Year’s Day 2023, the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) is pleased to welcome back visitors to their yearly tradition:Turner in January.
Scotland’s famous collection of Joseph Mallord William Turner watercolours was left to the nation by the great art collector Henry Vaughan in 1900. Since then, following Vaughan’s strict guidelines, they have only ever been displayed during the month of January, when natural light levels are at their lowest. Because of this, these watercolours still possess a freshness and an intensity of colour, almost 200 years since they were originally created.
Turner in January, the annual exhibition of these watercolours in Edinburgh, is a keenly awaited tradition for many people in Scotland. The 38 watercolours include dramatic landscapes from the Himalayas, the Swiss Alps, and the Isle of Skye, grand visions of Venice, and captivating seascapes. They will take you on a journey through Britain, Europe and beyond, and guide you through the life and career of this iconic artist.
Turner was the most famous British artist of the 19th century. In a career spanning over 50 years, he experimented constantly with technique and colour and created landscapes that still astonish today.
Turner developed new ways of painting in watercolour and revolutionised ideas of what could be achieved in the medium. Through a combination of exceptional talent and incredible hard work, Turner was able to capture in paint the sublime beauty of the natural world.
Taking over two large, spacious rooms within the Royal Scottish Academy, Turner in January contains all 38 watercolours from Henry Vaughan’s gift to the nation, plus the exciting addition of the mesmerising Bell Rock Lighthouse (1819).
In 2023, NGS is delighted that this much-loved annual exhibition is made possible thanks to players of People’s Postcode Lottery.
Charlotte Topsfield, Senior Curator of European & Scottish Art at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: ‘As we enter the New Year, Turner’s watercolours bring light to the dark days of January.
“The brilliantly preserved Vaughan Turners, and their accompanying tradition, hold a special place in the hearts of our visitors. We look forward to welcoming you back’.
Sensational find to go on display in Edinburgh this summer
The National Galleries of Scotland has discovered what is almost certainly a previously unknown self-portrait by Vincent van Gogh.
Believed to be a first for a UK institution, the mysterious image was revealed by an x-ray taken when art conservators examined Van Gogh’s Head of a Peasant Woman of 1885 ahead of the forthcoming exhibition A Taste for Impressionism (30 July–13 November) at the Royal Scottish Academy, Edinburgh. Visitors will be able to see the amazing x-ray image for the first timethrough a specially crafted lightbox at the centre of thedisplay.
Hidden from view for over a century, the self-portrait is on the back of the canvas with Head of a Peasant Woman and is covered by layers of glue and cardboard. NGS experts believe these materials were applied ahead of an exhibition in the early twentieth century. Van Gogh often re-used canvases to save money. However, instead of painting over earlier works, he would turn the canvas around and work on the reverse.
It may be possible to uncover the hidden self-portrait, but the process of removing the glue and cardboard will require delicate conservation work. Research is ongoing as to how that can be done without harming Head of a Peasant Woman.
Until then, the world can enjoy the tantalising discovery through a ghostly and utterly compelling x-ray image. It shows a bearded sitter in a brimmed hat with a neckerchief loosely tied at the throat. He fixes the viewer with an intense stare, the right side of his face in shadow and his left ear clearly visible.
Professor Frances Fowle, Senior Curator of French Art at the National Galleries of Scotland, said: “Moments like this are incredibly rare. We have discovered an unknown work by Vincent van Gogh, one of the most important and popular artists in the world.
“What an incredible gift for Scotland, and one that will forever be in the care of the National Galleries. We are very excited to share this thrilling discovery in our big summer exhibition A Taste for Impressionism, where the x-ray image of the self-portrait will be on view for all to see.”
The condition of the underlying self-portrait is not known but, if it can be uncovered, it is expected to help shed new light on this enigmatic and beguiling artist.
Later in date than the Head of a Peasant Woman, the hidden painting is likely to have been made during a key moment in Van Gogh’s career, when he was exposed to the work of the French impressionists after moving to Paris. The experience had a profound effect and was a major influence on why he adopted a more colourful and expressive style of painting – one that is so much admired today.
Head of a Peasant Woman entered the NGS collection in 1960, as part of the gift of an Edinburgh lawyer, Alexander Maitland, in memory of his wife Rosalind. Dating from an early period in Van Gogh’s career, the painting shows a local woman from the town of Nuenen in the south of the Netherlands, where the artist lived from December 1883 to November 1885.
Painted in March or April 1885, it seems to be a likeness of Gordina de Groot (known as Sien) who was a model for Van Gogh’s early masterpiece The Potato Eaters of 1885 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam). Her facial features, white cap and simple work clothes are sketched in oil, using broad brushstrokes and earthy colours typical of French realist artists such as Jean-François Millet, whom Van Gogh greatly admired.
In 1886 the artist moved to Paris to be closer to his brother Theo, who was an early supporter of the Impressionists. Exposed to the work of this revolutionary group of artists, Van Gogh lightened his palette and experimented with broken brushwork.
At the studio of Fernand Cormon, where he took classes in painting, he met avant-garde artists such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Emile Bernard. He also encountered the work of Georges Seurat and Paul Gauguin, under whose influence he began to paint more expressively, using brighter colours.
In the summer of 1887 Van Gogh was experimenting with painting portraits, using friends and also himself as a model. Theo was out of town and unable to assist financially, so Van Gogh re-used canvases to save money. Van Gogh died in 1890 and his brother followed six months later, at which point the artist’s entire oeuvre was left to Theo’s widow, Jo Van Gogh-Bonger.
Probably around 1905, when the Peasant Woman was lent to an exhibition at the Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam, the decision was made to stick the canvas down on cardboard prior to framing. At this date the Peasant Woman was evidently considered more ‘finished’ than the Van Gogh self-portrait.
The painting changed hands several times and in 1923 was acquired by Evelyn St. Croix Fleming, whose son, Ian, became the creator of James Bond. It was not until 1951 that it came to Scotland, having entered the collection of Alexander and Rosalind Maitland.
Neil Hanna Photography
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Once revealed, the hidden self-portrait will be part of a group of several such self-portraits and other works painted on the back of earlier canvases from the Nuenen period.
Five examples are in the Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam. Others in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art, Hartford, Connecticut; and the Kunstmuseum Den Haag.
Records in the Van Gogh Museum confirm that in 1929 the cardboard was removed from three of their Nuenen pictures by the Dutch restorer Jan Cornelis Traas, revealing the portraits on the verso.
