The Storm Before the Calm

One major conservation project that has been frequently discussed since the National Galleries of Scotland handed the Portrait Gallery over to the building contractors two years ago is the cleaning of William Hole’s painted surfaces. By that I mean not only the murals depicting key events in Scottish history on the ambulatory level, nor just the splendid gilded processional frieze around the Great Hall – but also the spectacular astronomically-themed ceiling with applied constellations.

Surreptitious tests from my scaffolding eyrie all those many months ago while applying a protective layer of tyvek to the walls revealed an alarming but not that surprising, accumulation of dirt.

Unlike the mural and frieze schemes that were cleaned a mere 30 years ago, as far as we are aware the ceiling has never been tackled since the building opened in the 1890s. Greasy deposits from Queen Street, tobacco stains and general household grime have combined to create a significantly murky surface. It was clearly unthinkable to re-open the building without making every effort to ensure that these great works of art, such a fundamental and unique aspect of the building, as inaccessible as they may initially appear, were given some much needed conservation attention.

Thanks to the generous funding of WREN (Waste Recycling Environmental Ltd) over the last couple of months we have leapt into action with our project manager hard hats securely affixed and our steel toe-capped shoes at the ready!

On Monday 20th June an ambitious 6 week cleaning project began.  Recruited to assist the Conservation Department and to manage a large and international team of conservation students, are conservators Fiona Allardyce and Karen Dundas. They both bring to the project their extensive experience of other similar decorative, architectural schemes of this period in Scotland, most notably at Mansfield Traquair Centre nearby.  Ten students from post-graduate painting conservation courses at the University of Northumbria, Newcastle, Courtauld Institute, London, Metropolia University of Applied Sciences, Helsinki, Academy of Fine Arts Stuttgart and Winterthur University, Delaware will all take part and gain invaluable experience by doing so.

And so the planning weeks have passed and we can now begin. Having believed that scaffolding in the building had finally departed along with the contractors another extensive ‘birdcage’ has just been installed in the Great Hall this week.

The materials, including a mountain of cotton wool, have been ordered, important Health and Safety issues are being addressed and cleaning tests are underway to establish a sound and effective methodology. Personally, after all these preparations I just cannot wait to get started. Keep abreast of our progress by following our regular updates on the Heads Up Blog.

Open Day

Nobody likes to work weekends – least of all me. However I really enjoyed spending a Saturday and Sunday back in the Gallery. We asked something like a thousand of our Friends and donors to have their first look at the renovated building and the response was fantastic.

The newly renovated Portrait Gallery

The two days had been flawlessly organised by Gemma Forrest and Mollie Waugh who both work in the National Galleries’ Development Department. The ground floor felt a bit like the departure lounge of a modern airport with couples checking in and groups waiting patiently for their pilot and crew to take them up. I took seven groups around altogether, each tour lasting about an hour.

Before we closed there were two questions that I was frequently asked. ‘James, you’re not going to wreck the building, are you?’ was one. And I think everyone agreed that our architect Page/Park’s interventions have been a huge success whilst their renovations have revealed the clarity and strength of Rowand Anderson’s original, brilliant design. The second question was ‘would the cheese scones return?’ We won the Herald Scone of the Year Award some years back and those scones are legendary. ‘Yes,’ I could honestly say. ‘They will return’. Last week, too, we signed the contract with Heritage Portfolio who baked those scones for us before we closed and will start baking again in November.

Lap 25 out of 33

Continuing the sporting references (all of which are too clichéd to be called puns but nevertheless require delivering with a burst of boom-boom foot shuffles) as part of the unfolding story of Portrait of the Nation, here is the latest instalment in the planning of the exhibition: Playing for Scotland: the Making of Modern Sport.

Boxing Poster - To the Lovers of the Manly Art of Self-Defence, Perth and Kinross Council Archive

The unloneliness of a long distance curator (status achieved due to the close working relationship enjoyed with colleagues in order to deliver this project) was tempered last week upon a first visit to the Portrait Gallery since the building has been handed back from the contractors. Walking along Queen Street buffeted by the excessive wind felt like an endurance test but as the south-west tower of the Gallery came seemingly slowly into vision, like a trusted loved one waiting at the end of the marathon finish line, a sense of excitement loomed. The marathon comparison really is topical as it will be just over twenty-six months, when we move back into the building in June, since the Gallery closed in April 2009.

Waiting inside the soon-to-be portrait arena were the runners and riders at the Dumfries Races in October 1834 alongside the Slashing Snob who made an appearance in the boxing ring in Perth in May 1852. Also at the Gallery were the Scottish and English football teams from 1902, and two ladies’ football teams representing munitions factories from Scotland and England who played each other in a charity match in 1918.

This cast of characters will be represented by the original advertisements for these sporting events in the form of large banners which will hang from the ceiling in Playing for Scotland: the Making of Modern Sport. In other areas work on the displays continues. Keep checking into Heads Up to see what we have planned for the displays in the Library.

Meet the Press

Driving past the Portrait Gallery last week I saw Willie Dickson, our Head Attendant, in his smart tartan trews, standing at the Front Door looking proprietorial and pleased.  Willie and his team have now been back in the building for a week and yesterday he was on duty to welcome the press for their first opportunity to see the completed renovations.

John Leighton, Nicola Kalinsky and I spoke briefly before taking the press party around the building. I have known most of the journalists and photographers for years and it was great to hear their very positive reactions. 

The Gallery looked tremendous – light, stylish and very well restored. I am now impatient to see the paintings on the walls.  But this will happen over the summer.  I return in three weeks when it will be my turn to stand smugly on those front steps.

The Boswell Book Festival

George Willison, James Boswell, 1740 - 1795. Diarist and biographer of Dr Samuel Johnson

No teenager should ever be told about James Boswell. He did everything his sober, sensible father, the judge Lord Auchinleck, told him not to do to become one of the most famous Scots in history. He bunked off university, was a serial philanderer, spent too much on art and wrote the greatest biography in the English language. And who now remembers Lord Auchinleck? It is a great thing that the first Boswell Book Festival has been organised and will run this weekend at Auchinleck House near Cumnock in Ayrshire. And good too that our wonderful portrait of the writer is being used to promote the festival.

George Willison painted Boswell in 1765 when they were both in Rome.  Boswell was campaigning for Corsican independence at the time and wears the island’s national costume in our painting.  You can see Boswell’s portrait in the refurbished Portrait Gallery when it opens on the 30th November 2011.

I’ve bought a ticket to hear the great American scholar Gordon Turnbull from Yale University talk on Sunday. James and Caroline Knox who are the festival organisers have brought together a dazzling cast of speakers.  Don’t miss it!

Wood Chips and Silver Saw Dust

The dust and wood chips were flying this week as we frantically jig-sawed 8ft sheets of Plywood into silhouettes of the Aberdeen skyline. Skilfully aided by exhibition designer Andy MacGregor (and our volunteers Jana and Fraser) we then pasted images, taken by the project participants, to represent the city’s streets.

The exhibition Silver City Soul, which opens tomorrow, is a ‘work in progress’, a video-portrait of Aberdeen. The centrepiece is a large projection of director Adam Proctor’s specially commissioned video featuring the people and places that make up the city.

This exhibition will develop over the next six months and will be shown again in Aberdeen Art Gallery in February next year. So if you live in the Granite City, look out for special workshops and events and keep sending us portraits of Aberdeen through the website www.silvercitysoul.me

Detectives, Drama and Time Travel

With just seven months to go before we open the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, the Education team is now planning in detail the inspiring launch events and activities and looking forward to moving back in to the building in June.

Portrait Detectives Copyright Alicia Bruce

Since last year we have been building our family audience and testing ideas such as the very successful Portrait Detectives at the National Gallery, led by artist-sleuths Duncan Robertson and Paula Flavell. Since starting this pilot drop-in event for families in December 2010, around 450 children and their parents have taken part and given some excellent feedback. Some parents have described it as:

“Good fun and a novel way of learning history.”

“A lovely way to get the children to have a better look at the paintings.”

We are really looking forward to taking Portrait Detectives to the Portrait Gallery where there will be endless mysteries and crimes to solve! Meanwhile you can catch the next session at the National Gallery on Sunday 8th May from 2-4pm.

On 4th April 2011, we welcomed Meg Faragher to the NGS Education team. Meg was recently appointed as the Learning Coordinator for the Portrait Gallery. Her role involves managing the family and community programmes and projects as well as coordinating the new learning spaces in the gallery.  Meg studied English Literature at university and also worked as an actress before moving into museum and gallery education a few years ago. We hope that Meg will draw on her experience of the dramatic arts in the development of some new family events!

Portrait Detectives Copyright Alicia Bruce

Another new education programme Meg is developing for the Portrait Gallery is Thanks for the Memories. This programme is aimed at older people including those living with dementia and Alzheimer’s. The idea is to team up with specialist organisations and care homes to provide a mixed programme of reminiscence and social events that older people can attend individually or as an organised group.  The Portrait Gallery exhibitions and themes provide ample opportunities to explore and collect living memories of the past. From participating in or watching sports in Scotland to the effect on people’s lives of key Scottish scientific discoveries, the new exhibitions provide many opportunities for people to contribute their own valuable and fascinating recollections, that will in turn benefit younger generations who visit the Portrait Gallery. A truly inter-generational way to time travel.

Portrait Detectives Copyright Alicia Bruce

Ramsay and Hume

David Hume, 1711 - 1776. Historian and philosopher, by Allan Ramsay

2011 is the tercentenary of the birth of David Hume, arguably Britain’s greatest philosopher.  One of the stories that appeals most to me about le bon David, as he was known in Paris, was that he moved from a flat in the Old Town of Edinburgh to more spacious accommodation in the new – close to where the Portrait Gallery would be built – so that he could have a larger kitchen.  He enjoyed cooking and entertaining his friends. One of those friends was the artist Allan Ramsay and Ramsay painted two superb portraits of Hume.  One dates from 1766 and shows him so splendidly dressed that when King George 111 saw it he commented that he thought Hume’s costume was rather too fine. To which Ramsay smartly replied:

‘I wished posterity to see that one philosopher during your Majesty’s reign had a good coat upon his back’. That portrait is currently hanging in the Portrait of the Nation exhibition at the National Gallery of Scotland.

Allan Ramsay, David Hume, Scottish National Portrait Gallery

The other, my favourite, was painted twelve years earlier.  It has just gone on loan to Paxton House in Berwickshire.  Paxton, which has just reopened to the public for the season, is one of the National Galleries’ partner galleries. Hume was a Berwickshire man and was born at Ninewells, Chirnside, not that far from Paxton.  Also, as a Hume (he changed the spelling from Home because as he said ‘thae glaiket English buddies’ made it rhyme with comb), he is distantly related to the Home Robertsons of Paxton. Both portraits will be back in the Portrait Gallery for our reopening in November in a special exhibition about Ramsay and Hume, Citizens of the World.

Paxton House

Portrait Shoot-Out at Aberdeen Football Club

The Silver City Soul project has been gathering momentum over the past few weeks in the build-up to an exhibition of the project in the National Gallery of Scotland, 28 April – 6 June 2011. Our project participants have taken to the streets armed with stills and video cameras, accompanied by life-size cut-outs taken from paintings by Aberdonian artists William Dyce and John Phillip. These include a Highland ferryman, Jesus and a Spanish waitress, and are intended to get the public thinking about how artists have used iconic figures to represent ideas and different ways of life.

This Saturday, 9 April, between 1pm and 3pm, we are setting up another street studio outside Pittodrie Stadium, the home of Aberdeen Football Club. We will be taking portrait photographs of the fans as they come to the game. We welcome anyone in Aberdeen to come and join us at this event and have their portrait taken. I wonder what odds the bookies will give me on the sun shining and the Dons winning? Here’s hoping…..

To create our contemporary, multi-layered portrait of Aberdeen we are asking everyone to contribute and are encouraging residents to pose for photographs or text/email us their own images of the city.

Video-artist Adam Proctor has been visiting all kinds of groups, individuals and organisations to gather images for the main video portrait and our activist participants have taken over a thousand images between them, many of which will appear in the exhibition.

Here’s some rough video footage and a couple of portraits taken by project participants from the last two street portrait workshops.

To see some of Adam’s fantastic shots for the film, including some pixilated street footage he has produced, and the great photos we have been receiving from members of the public visit www.silversoul.me. All the information you need to participate is under the ‘How to get Involved’ tab on the home page.

A greener gallery – more than just hot air

When this photograph was taken a couple of weeks ago, you can see that the building was still on a life support system.  Now I am pleased to report that the patient is surviving on its own pumps and circulation.  The boilers are fired up and all the new equipment is being commissioned.

Exterior

Here is a picture of the boiler room.  There are 4 boilers, each of no more than domestic size.  We have adopted new standards for environmental conditions within the gallery spaces that should be better for the art works and allow us to be much more energy efficient.  The effect is that conditions will vary rather more than has been normal but only very slowly so that the equipment will work with the fabric of the building rather than constantly fighting against it.  Our services consultants, Harley Haddow, write:

“By adopting this environmental control strategy, the capital cost of the air conditioning plant has been substantially reduced . . . . . . [by] 20-25%.  Electricity and gas energy required for the gallery spaces . . . . .  [should be] up to 42% less than for a traditional gallery operating to the guidelines of BS5454.  For the Portrait Gallery, this equates to approximately 11% reduction in Co2 emissions for the complete building’s annual energy consumption.”

Well, let’s hope so . . . . . .

boiler room

It is always enjoyable to visit Charles Taylor’s dramatic workshop in the old West Parish Church at Dalkeith.  We were there to discuss progress on the display cabinets that were designed by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson in the 1880s for the Portrait Gallery (or more accurately for the Nation Museum of Antiquities housed there).  There must have been dozens at one time but four have survived and three will be returning in May.

Charles Taylor's workshop