2010 is the 50th anniversary of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art
and it's the first time that the Gallery will have been re-hung
in its entirety since we moved here in 1984.
The great thing about the series of displays though the whole of 2010
is that admission is free.
It's the nation's Collection.
And we hope over the year and the course of
the exhibitions to bring to a wider public
exactly what it is that makes this Gallery and
its Collection world famous.
We're going to be showing old favourites,
works which are rarely hung.
We're going to be showing them in thematic displays
with unusual combinations.
So for example upstairs we're going to have works painted around 1910
looking at colour, and then you're going to walk through into a room
dedicated to pop and op art made in the 1960s
and again, examining colour, but by a different generation of artists.
The constructivism room is probably one of my favourites I think
of the rooms here because the room
itself I think looks really clean.
It's quite a 'wow' effect when you go in and
the sculpture hanging from the ceiling
I think it all really plays off each other quite nicely.
And then you've got the light sculpture next door just on its own.
I think that those two spaces for me are really strong
and it's really... I think it's kind of art about thought.
And I think that's a really exciting possibility with all the rooms
and how they play off each other.
Artist Rooms is part of our collection at the National Galleries
that is shared throughout the nation,
and from it we'll be showing Diane Arbus, Robert Therrien,
Gilbert and George, Ian Hamilton Finlay.
Big, big, international names.
A very exciting project that we've embarked upon
is to commission the Scottish painter, Scottish-based painter, Richard Wright
to paint two of the stairwells in the Dean Gallery.
He works in a very painstaking manner
painting onto the Gallery walls
He's on the whole done very few permanent wall paintings,
so this will be the first of its kind in Scotland.
The Gallery grounds have always been an important site for sculpture
but we're expanding that this year,
in that we're working with the British sculptor Antony Gormley
who I suppose is best known for The Angel of the North and
and also the figures on Crosby Beach.
As always with such an ambitious artist,
he challenged us with a work which extends out into the city.
Six figures, which will be sited in the Gallery grounds,
and then in the Water of Leith itself, which stretches from the Gallery to the sea,
with a final figure positioned on an abandoned pier in Leith Docks.
One major aspect that propels our collection
into the world's greatest collections is our holdings of Dada and Surrealist art.
In the summer at the Dean Gallery,
we will be holding a definitive exhibition of Dada and Surrealism.
Artists like Magritte, Miro, Duchamp,
Giacometti, Ernst. These are world-class artists
and the collection contains world-class works by these artists.
As well as the historic works from the collection,
we're also working with artists now.
We will be showing, for example, a huge monumental installation
by Scottish artist Martin Boyce,
who represented Scotland in the Venice Bienalle,
the most prestigious art event in the world.
Outside in the grounds there are two new works,
again by young Scottish artists.
One in the grounds of the Dean Gallery
by Nathan Coley, There Will Be No Miracles Here,
and another one on the façade of the Gallery of Modern Art
by Martin Creed, Turner prize winner of a couple of years ago.
And the work just spells out
'EVERYTHING IS GOING TO BE ALRIGHT',
which on the front of a neoclassical façade,
which is slightly stern and maybe awe inspiring,
it just makes you feel slightly more at ease
coming into something that, let's face it, for a lot of people
the idea of modern contemporary art is quite forbidding.
It's not. It should be a palace of fun.
A palace of propositions and proposals,
as in a way this is what we're offering through the collection,
throughout the whole of 2010.