More Scots are aware of Gordon's filmic subject, French footballing hero Zinedine Zidane, and his headbutting technique used when walking off the field, than of the artist himself. However, that is changing. 2006 has been an exceptionally creative year for the visual arts in Scotland as in many other parts of the UK. In some ways, it has been Scotland's year, and 2007 may well be different - there have been dramatic moves by key players. Tim Clifford has retired from the directorship of the National Galleries of Scotland; a real loss not only to classical and baroque art, but also to the contemporary field. Clifford was a significant performer and impresario in the arts. As a Sassenach, on arrival he experienced a wave of cringing paranoia, but cleverly outflanked this mood by dressing his National Gallery and Gallery of Modern Art attendants in tartan trews. Richard Demarco, like Johnny Walker, still going strong at 77 years, receives a CBE in the New Year 2007 Honours (as did Norman Ackroyd RA - let's just keep this in proportion). Demarco has also, on occasion, been seen in tartan trousers. Demarco's archive is now the subject of a major research project by Dundee University. It represents a massive stock item of document boxes, most of which still have to be documented (Joseph Beuys et al). It might be a harsh verdict that a significant proportion of this is valueless. However, archives are notoriously difficult to value and must be taken as a whole, which gives point to the research project grant of over £300,000 from UK government Arts and Humanities Research Council sources. The archive is currently located in a large warehouse through the generosity of a major sponsor in the Lothian region, near Edinburgh.

To return to Sir Tim Clifford, his most ingenious curatorial coup, of many, together with the Director of the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Richard Calvocoressi, has been to secure for all time the archive of the work and source material of sculptor Sir Eduardo Paolozzi. Paolozzi also fulfilled a quite separate good turn to the National Galleries of Scotland in arranging for Gabrielle Keiller's collection of Surrealist art and literature, a very unique combination, to be directed towards the same institution. Over many years, as a friend and mentor of Keiller, he had himself guided and inspired the selection of key works and major items for Keiller's collection at Kingston upon Thames outside London. At one point, Glasgow University's Professor of Art, Andrew McLaren Young, had been courting Keiller's interest and commitment. When he sadly collapsed on the steps of the Royal Academy and died, all this track came to an end. Influential friends of Paolozzi and Keiller, including Murray Grigor the filmmaker and architect Michael Spens, a member of the Scottish Arts Council, brought both Paolozzi and Keiller into contact with Richard Calvocoressi and so to the trustees of the National Galleries in Edinburgh. Clifford facilitated this engagement; and, with Calvocoressi, found enough space for both collections in good time. Clifford was, of course, instrumental in making all this possible; and so the Surrealist collection was also provided with accommodation at the newly anointed Dean Galleries, adjunct to the National Gallery of Modern Art in Edinburgh. There now can be found both a replication of Paolozzi's London Dovehouse Street studio and one of Europe's outstanding Surrealist collections in the same building. Clifford later also secured a major Scottish commission executed by Paolozzi in 1973, a seminal work for the Dean Gallery, now installed in 12 panels, as completed, and commissioned a sculptural figure of the allegorical god Vulcan to stand with it in the main reception space of the building. So, in the contemporary arts field, Clifford had been supremely instrumental in all these achievements before leaving the stage.

It is sad to relate that Richard Calvocoressi is also leaving the National Galleries of Scotland, where he has been Director for many years, to take up the post of Director of the Henry Moore Foundation in Hertfordshire. The most exciting prospect now in the wider international curatorial world is that Calvocoressi, as a top museum director, can be free in the not-too-distant future, to take up any directorial post in the world that comes on offer. This gravitation of a star southwards may not yet cease its heavenly progress.

In February 2007, as part of this ongoing UK-based survey, Studio International will review developments in East Anglia, where the Sainsbury Centre in Norwich has effectively been re-launched with a new curatorial team.

Michael Spens