National Galleries Scotland: Modern (the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art) is part of National Galleries Scotland, which is based in Edinburgh, Scotland. The Modern houses the collection of modern and contemporary art dating from about 1900 to the present in two buildings, Modern One and Modern Two, that face each other on Belford Road to the west of the city centre.
The Modern has a collection of more than 6000 paintings, sculptures, installations, video work, prints and drawings and also stages major exhibitions.
History
The first Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (SNGMA) opened in August 1960 in Inverleith House, a Georgian building set in the middle of Edinburgh's Royal Botanic Garden.
Inverleith House became a contemporary art gallery, curated by the Royal Botanic Garden, also featuring exhibitions of works and specimens from its historic collections.[3]
In 1999, the SNGMA's collection had outgrown the Watson's premises, and it expanded into the Dean Orphan Hospital, a neoclassical orphanage situated on the other side of Belford Road which had been erected by Thomas Hamilton in 1833. The Dean Gallery was converted to a gallery by Terry Farrell and Partners.[2]
In 2012, National Galleries of Scotland underwent a rebranding exercise, and the two Belford Road galleries were renamed Modern One and Modern Two.[4][5]
A further rebranding was undertaken in 2023, when the organisation's name was changed to National Galleries Scotland. The names of the individual gallery buildings were also renamed, and the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is now billed as National Galleries Scotland: Modern.[6]
Modern Two, the former Dean GalleryModern Two, Keiller Library
Modern Two (formerly the Dean Gallery) is home to a changing programme of world-class exhibitions and displays drawn from the permanent collection. On permanent display is a recreation of the sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi's studio, as well as his 7.3 metre-tall sculpture, Vulcan, that dominates the café. Modern Two is also home to the gallery's world-famous collection of Surrealism, including works by Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Alberto Giacometti. The building houses a library, archive and special books collection. The library's great strengths are Dada and Surrealism, early twentieth century artists and contemporary Scottish art. The archive contains over 120 holdings relating to twentieth and twenty-first century artists, collectors and art organisations, including the gallery's own papers. The archive holds one of the world's best collections of Dada and Surrealist material, largely made up by the collections of Roland Penrose and Gabrielle Keiller. The special books collection contains over 2,500 artist books and limited edition livres d’artiste, again with a main focus on Dada and Surrealism, but also books by other major artists from the twentieth century including Oskar Kokoschka's Die Träumenden Knaben (1917) and Henri Matisse's Jazz (1947). This material is available to the public in the reading room, open to the public by appointment. There are regular changing displays in the Gabrielle Keiller library to showcase items from these collections.