Significant Stirling Smith Artworks on Display at The Royal Academy

The Stirling Smith is delighted to have two major works by founder Thomas Stuart Smith, represented at the Royal Academy exhibition ‘Entangled Pasts, 1768 – now: Art, Colonialism and Change’. Thomas Stuart Smith was a Scottish artist, abolitionist, visionary who regularly submitted his own paintings to Royal Academy exhibitions from 1865.

Continue reading

Stirling Smith Paintings in Animal Crossing New Horizons

On Monday, 18 May we celebrated International Museum Day with museums and galleries across the world…and now in the digital sphere.  Nintendo’s latest release, Animal Crossing: New Horizons has taken the world by storm and it too, is celebrating International Museum Day.   For those who don’t know, the game

Continue reading
Nipple Protector

Heavy metal nipple guard or 18th Century boil sucker? Quizeum

Just one of the questions the panel faced as the Quizeum explored the collections of the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum on Monday 23 November, 2015 Griff Rhys Jones was joined by Quizeum regulars Lars Tharp and Janina Ramirez.  And special guests, writer and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli and

Continue reading

St Fillan’s chain, from a healing pool at Killin

The six links of the chain of St. Fillan, Killin, in the Stirling Smith collections are not much to look at, but they can be counted among the treasures of the Smith. They caught the imagination of a group of students at the University of Western Australia who made a

Continue reading

James Wedlake Bannockburn 700

James gives us an insight into the Smith’s own Bannockburn exhibition on the Art in Scotland TV webchannel.

Continue reading

The Pacific Collection – Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum

On Wednesday 19th February, the Stirling Smith was lucky enough to be visited by Eve Haddow, Assistant Curator at National Museums Scotland. Eve has been working on the Pacific Collections Review- a project dedicated to increasing information on and exploring the relationships between collections based on the Pacific islands in

Continue reading

Victorian Valentine Fan

An elaborate fan, of machine cut paper lace, was the Valentine message sent by J. Malcolm Allan’s grandfather to his sweetheart in 1889.  The couple married in 1890, and until it was gifted to the Smith in 2002, the Valentine fan was a family treasure.  More versatile than a card,

Continue reading

Gourlay Feathery Golf Ball

Until 20 March, the Stirling Smith has the privilege of hosting the famous Ryder Cup Heritage exhibition. The ancient Royal Burgh and City of Stirling has golfing heritage of its own. It is recorded in the accounts of the Lord High Treasurer of Scotland that on 29 March 1506 James

Continue reading

The Stirling Smith receives its First Birthday Present for 2014

  Twenty textile artists have collaborated on the new banner, sewn by the members of the Stirling and District Embroiderers Guild. With the 140th birthday of the Smith, the 700th anniversary of Bannockburn, the centenary of the Great War, and the 50th anniversary of the Stirling – Dunedin twinning, the

Continue reading
Remembering Bannockburn.

Remembering Bannockburn the Bannockburn Brooch

The brand new visitor centre, interpreting the Battle of Bannockburn, will satisfy every question, about the momentous events of 23-24 June 1314, when it opens later this year.  It is 50 years since the old visitor centre opened, to join the great flagpole, put up in 1870 to enable people

Continue reading