The Scottish art archive should have a proper home
As Richard Demarco’s art and document collection archive is to be moved from Craigcrook Castle in Edinburgh, Tiffany Jenkins says we do not value the past enough and should take more care of it.
There are hundreds of boxes stacked away in Craigcrook Castle, in Edinburgh’s Blackhall area. Inside them you will find around 2,500 artworks including paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures and 20,000 multilingual publications. Approximately 500 hold correspondence, manuscripts, as well as extensive film and audio. But calculating the extensive number of papers, artworks and writing tells us little about what they could reveal in the right hands and under the right conditions. Forensically documenting a pivotal period in the arts in Scotland and Europe from the 1960s, and even earlier, to the present day, they are a large part of the archive of Richard Demarco – the artist and lynchpin for the visual and performing arts in Scotland for over 50 years.
The archive urgently needs a proper home. The castle has been sold so the material needs to be moved and soon. Besides, housing it there was far from ideal because most of it was not on show and it could not be properly attended to. The problem is, despite the significance of this resource, and despite the widespread recognition that Mr Demarco has won here and in Europe – he is a CBE, and was recently presented with the 2013 European Citizen’s Medal, the only UK recipient of this year’s award – we do not value the past. We pay lip service to the importance of history, but do not take any care to preserve it.
There are hundreds of boxes stacked away in Craigcrook Castle, in Edinburgh’s Blackhall area. Inside them you will find around 2,500 artworks including paintings, prints, drawings, sculptures and 20,000 multilingual publications. Approximately 500 hold correspondence, manuscripts, as well as extensive film and audio. But calculating the extensive number of papers, artworks and writing tells us little about what they could reveal in the right hands and under the right conditions. Forensically documenting a pivotal period in the arts in Scotland and Europe from the 1960s, and even earlier, to the present day, they are a large part of the archive of Richard Demarco – the artist and lynchpin for the visual and performing arts in Scotland for over 50 years.
The archive urgently needs a proper home. The castle has been sold so the material needs to be moved and soon. Besides, housing it there was far from ideal because most of it was not on show and it could not be properly attended to. The problem is, despite the significance of this resource, and despite the widespread recognition that Mr Demarco has won here and in Europe – he is a CBE, and was recently presented with the 2013 European Citizen’s Medal, the only UK recipient of this year’s award – we do not value the past. We pay lip service to the importance of history, but do not take any care to preserve it.