The Art Newspaper

Curator resigns over sculpture commission

From issue 191, May 2008
Published online 1 May 08 (News)

LONDON. Richard Calvocoressi, former director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh, now director of the Henry Moore Foundation, has resigned from the committee that advises the Scottish Parliament on art purchases. Mr Calvocoressi was opposed to plans to buy a 20-tonne work by Scottish artist Ronald Rae—The Lion of Scotland—that some politicians wanted to see erected outside the parliament buildings in Edinburgh. Rae’s sculpture was originally priced at £120,000, a figure in excess of the entire annual budget for public art purchases for the Scottish parliament. Mr Calvocoressi told the Observer newspaper that the sculpture had “rustic, folk-art qualities, the kind of piece you might expect to find in a country park but perhaps not outside the nation’s parliament building in the middle of a capital city”. Rae is reported to have replied: “Richard Calvocoressi is an arrogant prick and his curatorial skills are crap.” I.M.

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