Edinburgh’s City Art Centre programme of new exhibitions for 2026 continues with two major exhibitions offering fascinating perspectives on the capital as a cultural centre.
Jean F. Watson: An Artistic Legacy (16th May – 4th Oct) offers an insight into Jean Fletcher Watson (1877-1974) – an Edinburgh resident who had a significant impact on the city’s cultural heritage. In the 1960s and 1970s Jean presented a series of financial donations to the City of Edinburgh to develop a collection of Scottish art, and since then, the Jean F. Watson Bequest Fund has enabled the acquisition of more than 1,000 artworks.
The exhibition celebrates Watson’s vision and generosity, showcasing a selection of historic and contemporary artworks from the collection, by artists including William Fettes Douglas, Arthur Melville, Charles Hodge Mackie, J D Fergusson, Anne Redpath, Eric Schilsky, Joan Eardley, James Cumming, Eduardo Paolozzi, Elizabeth Blackadder, Will Maclean, Alison Watt and Leena Nammari.
Sandra George (30th May – 27th Sept) showcases the work of Sandra George (1957-2013), who was born in Nottingham, brought up in Jamaica, and returned to the UK to live firstly in Birmingham and then Edinburgh, where she lived for the rest of her life, working as a photographer and community worker across the city from the 1980s until her untimely death in 2013.
George’s work centred around community, developing and documenting a broad range of projects, foregrounding social activism, disability rights and youth empowerment, as well as exploring her own family and identity, sharing her perspective as a black female photographer – rare in Scotland at that time. The exhibition will be accompanied by a new publication, the first dedicated to her work.
On display from 18th July, Rachel McBrinn & Jonathan Webb: Study for North Bridge is a new moving-image commission by artists Rachel McBrinn and Jonathan Webb responding to the historic North Bridge, built in the 1760s, which neighbours the Art Centre and is soon to complete a major restoration. The work follows other artworks commissioned by the city to document and commemorate one of Edinburgh’s most historically significant landmarks.
Upcoming exhibitions include Gifted: New Acquisitions at the City Art Centre (12th Sept – 6th June 2027), which showcases recent additions to the city’s collection of fine art, recognised for its national significance, and containing more than 5,000 individual artworks. The exhibition showcases paintings, drawings, sculptures, prints and photographs, including work by Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, John Bellany, Robert Blomfield, Victoria Crowe (whose work is pictured above), Ian Hamilton Finlay, Jessie M. King, Bet Low, Joseph Noel Paton and Robin Philipson.
In the autumn, a major solo exhibition by Aberdeen-based printmaker Ade Adesina (7th Nov – 11th April 2027) will bring together an expansive collection of Adesina’s monumental woodcuts, etchings, linocuts and screenprints, alongside works made with other artists, and a newly-commissioned work produced specially for the exhibition.
Also beginning in the autumn, Kenneth Dingwall: Being (21st Nov – 7th March 2027) is a major retrospective by the contemporary Edinburgh-based artist, spanning 60 years of his abstract drawings, paintings, prints and constructions. Dingwall, born 1938 in Clackmannanshire, studied at Edinburgh College of Art in the 1950 and spent his working life balancing his artistic practice with teaching in Scotland, France and the United States, returning to his Edinburgh studio in 2003 to focus on painting. His work has been exhibited widely and is held in several collections across Europe and the United States, and the exhibition will be accompanied by a new publication featuring essays by art historians Professor Natalie Adamson, Professor Duncan Macmillan and Dr Alistair Rider, plus background notes from Dingwall’s personal sketchbooks giving insights to his working methods.
Now under the aegis of CultureEdinburgh, City Art Centre remains one of the most important art venues in the country.
