In 1994, the Art Fund helped the Gallery to acquire Tracey Emin's Family Suite: 20 drawings dealing with the artist's archetypal themes of sex, her family, her abortions and Margate.
Joan Miró's Maternité is celebrated as one of the masterpieces of his early maturity. A symbolic homage to fertility and womanhood, the painting's wit comes from its highly distilled images. A female ideogram stands in for a woman, each breast supporting a wriggling child. A sperm-like creature at the centre of the painting reflects the male's sole role in the process.
Six life-size cast iron figures appear at various points along the Water of Leith, from the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art to the harbour where the river meets the sea. These form Anthony Gormley's 6 Times – the first publicly sited work by the artist in Scotland. Gormley said of the project: 'It is wonderful to have the chance to make a work that connects so many different parts of this great city. When you see one you will, perhaps, remember another. The idea is to connect to time, weather and place and play part in the making of a scene, a picture, a reality, incomplete without you: the observer.'
A major rehang in 2015 saw the creation of a memorial display celebrating the work of the Scottish sculptor, painter and printmaker William Turnbull, who had died three years earlier. Included are a set of paintings and bronze sculptures acquired by the gallery in 2014 with Art Fund support. It also features 23 works on paper – displayed here for the first time – which were presented by the artist’s family through the Art Fund.
