How The Scottish National Portrait Gallery Was Saved

Abstract

In 1991 and 1992 there was an intermittent debate in the Scottish press about the news that the Trustees of the National Galleries were considering plans for a new National Gallery of Scottish Art on the grounds that their collections had outgrown their exhibition space. At first, discussion focussed on the general concept. Was it desirable for the major part of the Scottish collection in the National Gallery and the Gallery of Modern Art to be removed from their international context and isolated in a separate building? This would mean a violent break from the established idea of the National Gallery that it should aim at showing the develoment of the Scottish school against a background of examples from other important schools. Scottish painting has always been intimately related to the painting of the rest of Europe, with constant influences in both directions. It would therefore be very difficult to find any artistic or academic justification for its isolation. This was the general conclusion reached in the debate in the press between artists and art historians. In Duncan Macmillan's telling phrase, a National Gallery without the Scottish collection would be a National Gallery of nowhere.