On Monday we went to Edinburgh to visit The Scottish National Galleries of Modern Art, there are two of them, across the road from each other, so we visited them both and had lunch in one of them. I must say that the word ‘modern’ also applies to artworks which nowadays we would see as being historic, but in their day they were modern.

If you click on the link above and scroll down you can see all of the artworks. I’ve been scrolling down their great collection of photographs, they’re so interesting from a social history point of view.

We inadvertently visited the Ray Harryhausen exhibition when we were there on Monday. He was a film animator and made a lot of SF/Fantasy films, they’re not really to my taste but he was so talented and developed special effects which were the precursor to the green screen that is used today.

It’s a large exhibition with lots of his preparatory drawings, I thought they were really good despite not being that keen on the subject matter, you can see some here.

There’s a Harryhausen film playing in one of the rooms and visitors can stand in front of it to appear in the film. Below you can see a photo of Jack and myself in front of it, I suppose we should have taken a video and run about a bit!

Elsewhere there’s all sorts of art, including a few by Dali and some Picassos. The ‘portrait’ below is of the famous photographer Lee Miller who was actually rather good looking. I wonder what she thought of it?! You can see her and some of her photographs here.

Due to Covid restrictions it was suggested on the website that you book up to visit. There was no problem with that as they had lots of time slots. I don’t know if restrictions have now eased at the Galleries but it’ll say on the website.