Specialist Tour | Black History Month - Aubrey Williams Centenary & collecting

Glasgow Museums Resource Centre is hosting a specialist tour on Tuesday 20 October, focusing on two paintings by the Guyanese artist Aubrey Williams. It's part of the city's Black History Month programme and marks the centenary of Williams' birth — he was born on 8 May 1926.

Williams lived in Guyana until 1952, when he moved to London to enrol at St Martin's School of Art. He became an influential figure in the artistic community and is now regarded as an important contributor to twentieth-century abstract painting. His canvases are known for their vibrant colour, paint and surface texture, with layers that merge geological, historical and human ideas. He famously argued that abstraction was 'no less socially committed as figurative painting' and could communicate as much as the written word. He belonged to a generation of Caribbean artists who came to Britain after the war and left their mark on modern British art.

The tour concentrates on two of his paintings held by Glasgow Museums, including Rockface (1964), which was gifted by the Estate of Aubrey Williams in 2019. Along with the artworks themselves, the session considers the questions surrounding museum collecting. It's a chance to see the work up close and hear about the thinking that went into bringing it into the city's collections.

The tour starts at 2:30pm at the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre, 200 Woodhead Road, Nitshill, Glasgow G53 7NN. Entry is free, but it's limited to 15 spaces and you'll need to book in advance.