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AINT THAT THE TRUTH

Elspeth King (1949 - 2025) Elspeth King, who has died aged 76, changed the course of Scottish museum practice by insisting that everyday lives of working people deserved the same care and attention as fine art or art relics. As curator of the People’s Palace museum in Glasgow from 1974 to 1990, she reshaped a fading municipal institution into a living record of the city’s social history, showing that museums could speak in the voices of the communities they served. When King arrived at the People’s Palace, the museum’s purpose had drifted. Founded in 1898 as a museum for the citizens of Glasgow’s East End, it had by the 1970s become a place of dusty cases and dwindling visitors. King brought new energy and a conviction that the city’s own people – its shipbuilders, factory workers, musicians and market traders – should be at the centre of its story. Over 16 years, she curated 40 exhibitions, many developed directly with local groups. Scotland 'Sober and Free' (1979), marking the 150th anniversary of the temperance movement, drew record audiences; another, in collaboration with her colleague and partner Michael Donnelly, assistant curator at the museum and an expert in Scottish stained glass of the 19th and early 20th centuries, celebrated Glasgow’s stained-glass tradition. The 1981 show advanced research into the city’s pivotal role in stained-glass manufacture and, through Donnelly’s lead, helped to rescue and preserve threatened works, as well as creating a significant permanent collection at the museum. King’s most controversial early success involved the comedian Billy Connolly’s “banana boots”, designed by the pop artist Edmund Smith, and which she included in one of her first exhibitions. Visitors and critics protested that Connolly’s rough language and reputation had no place in a museum; King argued that the boots captured Glasgow’s irreverent spirit. They went on to become part of the Palace’s permanent collection, and one of its best known exhibits. She made her cat, Smudge, the museum’s official “rodent catcher” in 1979, and a member of the GMB – a small act that summed up her blend of wit and social conscience. King was also unafraid to take a political stance. In the late 70s she led opposition to a motorway project that threatened to demolish the People’s Palace. To strengthen the museum’s case, she enlisted the then little known artist Alasdair Gray to document the life of the city. His resulting 'Continuous Glasgow Show' (1978), a sequence of more than 30 illustrative paintings, gave the museum fresh life and arguably saved it from closure. The friendship between King and Gray endured until his death in 2019. The People’s Palace won European Museum of the Year in 1981 and British Museum of the Year in 1983. Though her outspoken defence of community-based culture often brought her into conflict with Glasgow city council she never lost the respect of her peers. In 1990 she left the museum, having been passed over for promotion as keeper of Glasgow’s social history, a position that would have run across several museums, including the People’s Palace. She became director of the Dunfermline Heritage Trust, where she oversaw the restoration of Abbot House, transforming it into a heritage centre rooted in local history. Born in Lochore, Fife, into a working-class community, King developed an early appreciation for uncovering overlooked histories. The daughter of a miner, William King, and his wife, Christina (nee Cowie), she attended Beath high school in Cowdenbeath before studying medieval history at the University of St Andrews, gaining a post-graduate degree in museum studies at Leicester University. In 2005, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Stirling in recognition of her contributions to Scottish museums and the promotion of Scottish history and culture.

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