Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh. Collection of 20th-century art founded in 1960 as an extension of the National Gallery of Scotland. Because the Tate Gallery includes historic British art as well as modern art, the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art is the United Kingdom's only national museum devoted solely to 20th-century art. Unlike the Tate, however, it remains under the control of its parent body—the Trustees of the National Galleries of Scotland. The original nucleus of the collection consisted of 20th-century paintings and sculptures that happened to be owned by the National Gallery of Scotland. They were nearly all by Scottish artists, but the gallery has since built up a wide-ranging international collection in which most of the major movements and many of the greatest figures are represented. It is particularly strong in Dada and Surrealism, and in 1994 its importance as a centre for the study of these movements was greatly enhanced by the purchase of Sir Roland Penrose's library and archive. The following year it bought 25 works of art from Penrose's collection. The original home of the gallery was Inverleith House, a modestly-sized Georgian mansion in the Royal Botanical Gardens. This was always intended as a temporary measure, but it was not until 1984 that the gallery re-opened in its present much larger premises, an impressive Greek Revival building dating from 1825 that was formerly John Watson's School. See also CURSITER.