Top Ten Exhibitions of 2008
(in no particular order)

Before the credit crunch hit, 2008 was a year of optimism for Scottish galleries, with new spaces springing up, and old friends upsizing to bigger and better premises. In Edinburgh, Ingleby Gallery sank private money into a swanky new three-floor, glass-fronted establishment, while an old Victorian Bathhouse became Dovecot Studios’ own glass-fronted palace of crafts. In the west, nomadic Glasgow Sculpture Studios found a new home in Kelvinhaugh Street, with space for everything from giant lathes to a library.

Scottish galleries continued to mount exhibitions of international quality – not only borrowed shows like Gerhard Richter and Art Of The Baroque, but home-grown stunners including Impressionism & Scotland, and Tracey Emin’s first major UK retrospective. Steven Campbell’s new work was unveiled on the anniversary of his tragic death, and Scotland lost another old favourite, John Houston, at the age of 78.

The Art of Italy in the Royal Collection: The Baroque
November 2008 – March 2009; The Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh
The Queen’s Gallery threw caution to the wind with this sumptuous feast of high baroque drawn entirely from the Royal Collection. Gone are the quietly studious shows of the past: every inch of wall space is dripping with fleshy lust and holy passion, from masters such as Caravaggio, Guido Reni and Annibale Carracci.

Impressionism & Scotland
July – October; National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh
The Scottish Cringe was banished by this first class show, which told the story of Scotland’s love affair with Impressionism. Our collectors were first into the fray, snapping up the French paintings before the world caught on, and Scottish painters were in the thick of things. Their paintings looked so good amongst those of their famous continental counterparts, that even experts were left speechless.

Steven Campbell: “… Wretched Stars, Insatiable Heaven…” New Work 2006-2007
August – October; Glasgow School of Art & Glasgow Print Studio
This was the show that Steven Campbell was making when he died, at 54, of a ruptured appendix. The Gaviscon he had been taking for stomach ache appears in the paintings, along with scores of unfathomable clues to the meaning of life and death. These rich works are the product of a unique mind, one which may never be equalled in Scottish art.

Tracey Emin: 20 Years
August - November; Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh
Edinburgh pulled off the first major retrospective for the artist who the tabloids love to hate, which gave us a chance to see Emin’s fluffy side as well as her better-known profane aspect. The comprehensive show – including that famous unmade bed – made sense of an artist too often mediated for us in sensational bite-sized pieces.

Cathy Wilkes: Prices
July – September; Modern Institute, Glasgow
Though Cathy Wilkes’ art is understated and not easily grasped, it found its way into the media glare with this year’s Turner Prize nomination. In advance of the London spectacle, the Modern Institute offered a more reflective space for getting to grips with Wilkes’ melancholic supermarket checkout mannequins.

Close-Up
October – January 2009; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
The Fruitmarket’s tendency to mount shows of sophistication, both in terms of content and presentation, reached a climax with its final exhibition of the year. This fascinating investigation of the close-up, from the birth of photography to the present day, was meticulously researched, beautifully constructed, and a real eye-opener.

Gerhard Richter: Paintings From Private Collections
November – January 2009; National Gallery Complex, Edinburgh
Richter may not be a household name, but the German artist is described by some as the world’s greatest living painter. In the UK’s first large-scale survey of Richter’s work in 20 years, the National Galleries brought together over 60 paintings ranging from the smudgy, photo-based works of the 1960s to his sensual abstracts of the 1990s and beyond.

Kenny Hunter: A Shout in the Street
July – August; Tramway, Glasgow
This exhibition of new work was a typically appealing collection of sculptures, as Hunter explored the subtleties of public art, consumer culture, and the resilience of urban wildlife. Chunky foxes and pigeons sat on laboriously cast human detritus: microwaves, pizza boxes and regurgitating rubbish bags. Forget neoclassical philosophers swathed in anachronistic robes; Hunter’s are the monumental anti-heroes for our time.

The Intimate Portrait
October – February 1 2009; Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh
In its last major exhibition before it closes its doors for a two-year refurbishment, the Portrait Gallery made the most of its first class collection of works on paper. In a collaboration with the British Museum, two hundred portrait drawings, miniatures and pastels of Georgian and Regency Britain filled the walls with personality, intimacy and charm.

The House Of Books Has No Windows
August - September; Fruitmarket Gallery, Edinburgh
This Scottish debut for internationally recognised Canadian artists Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller left a lasting impression on anyone who dared venture in. Six mini-worlds of clutter and dust, brought alive by automated music and lights, seduced you into nightmarish scenarios of torture, insanity and ghostly hauntings. It was not so much art you had seen as places you had been.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 28.12.08