Alasdair Gray: Works from the Morag McAlpine Bequest

June 2025 – June 2026
4 pencil drawn figures on a blue background with text overlay

Four Folk in Glasgow Publishing 1977: Simon Berry and Bill McLellan, Glasgow Publishers, Jim Taylor, Australian Writer and Printer, Shelley Killen USA Artist, 1977, by Alasdair Gray. Glasgow Life Museums’ collection. © The Estate of Alasdair Gray

Glasgow Life Museums is delighted to announce the display of nine works from The Morag McAlpine Bequest – a significant gift to Glasgow Life Museums by Alasdair Gray following the death of his wife Morag McAlpine in 2014.

2025 marks 10 years since the gift was donated to Glasgow Life Museums and is on display in what would have been Gray’s 90th year. 

This is the first time objects from this bequest have been on display in a Glasgow Life Museums venue, and includes the original design artwork for Poor Things – his novel published in 1992. 

Works on display include the wrap-around jacket for Old Negatives, artwork in progress for the jacket design of Agnes Owens' People Like That, and A Working Mother, among others.

This display shows aspects of Gray’s artistic practice – the process of making artwork for publications, from inception to print. 

Artworks on display show the use and reuse of imagery, and ways of re-imagining the influence of historical artworks into Gray's own distinctive style.

The display also highlight's Gray's use of erratum - the ability to use anything to hand (Tippex®, sticky labels etc.) to instantly make changes to the works.

This display opens Saturday 14 June 2025 in the Fragile Art Gallery in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Alasdair Gray in his Kersland St. flat with Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties. Photograph by Alan Wylie.

About the artist

Alasdair Gray (28 December 1934 – 29 December 2019) was one of Scotland’s most multi-talented artists.

He was born in Riddrie in the east of Glasgow and attended The Glasgow School of Art (GSA) in the 1950s. 

As well as the Morag McAlpine Bequest, also on display in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties – a significant example of his painting within the decade following his graduation from GSA in 1957.

Gray was a prolific poet, playwright, novelist, painter, and printmaker whose work continues to be celebrated in books, exhibitions, conferences, and the annual Gray Day on 25 February.

He credited his fledging love of painting to a weekend art class he attended as a child at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.  

Glasgow Life Museums holds the following works by Alasdair Gray. 

City Recorder (1977–78)
The Morag McAlpine Bequest (2015)
Night and Day (Dawn Firth Series): Oran Mor Test Panel (2003)
Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties (1964)

A selection of City Recorder artworks is available to view on display at the Gallery of Modern Art.

Don't miss a FREE talk on Friday 4 July at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum with Curator / Producer Katie Bruce on the new Alasdair Gray display. Part of our Kelvingrove Bites talk series.

More Alasdair Gray