Glasgow Is International

As Glasgow’s art community frantically makes its final preparations for the launch later this week of the fifth edition of Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art, the material hidden in the boxes of the Third Eye Archive reveals a long standing heritage of drawing international art to Glasgow and promoting Scottish art beyond its borders.

Extracts from Directors reports c.1981-1984 highlight that The Third Eye Centre was Scotland’s most active touring agency during this period, and lists an extensive touring programme of exhibitions including ‘A Moment in Time: Scottish Contributions to Photography’ and the popular  ‘History of Scottish Football’.  The reports also comment on the development of international links through research trips resulting in exhibitions of Canadian, Hungarian and Aboriginal art. 

While these reports provide clear statistical evidence of Glasgow and The Third Eye Centre's links to international  creative activity, the real proof of its global ambitions are revealed in the pages of enthusiastic correspondence in French (or Franglais) between the then exhibitions officer Bridget Brown and Liliane Touraine, the curator of the Musical Graphics exhibition from the Mussee d’Art Moderne in Paris.  Musical Graphics  bought together visual imagery of musical scores alongside a performance programme and was the most comprehensive exhibition of its kind at the time with scores presented from John Cage to Mozart.

From these early days of attracting an international audience and artists to the city, Glasgow is well primed for the exciting events of the next two weeks...

Image Credit: The Third Eye Centre Archive