Centre for Robert Burns Studies

With our colleague, Dr Ralph McLean at the NLS, the team co-curated the ‘Allan Ramsay: Writing the Scots Enlightenment’ exhibition at the National Library of Scotland. The exhibition launched on the 18 February and was due to run until the 16 May 2020. Though the run of the exhibition was cut short due to Covid-19, we are still able to share the display in a short video, featured below. More information about the exibition can be found in our blog. Dr Craig Lamont has also written a blog on the Ramsay material at the NLS for the British Association of Romantic Studies.

The ‘Allan Ramsay: Writing the Scots Enlightenment’ exhibition video

Working with our colleagues Dr Lucinda Lax (Senior Curator of Eighteenth-Century Collections at the Scottish National Portrait Gallery) and Helen Smailes (Senior Curator of British Art at the Scottish National Gallery) we continue to tell the story of both Allan Ramsays. 

The display Scots in Italy: Artists and Adventurers was curated by Dr Lax, and with stunning results. Among the many Scots artists on display is Allan Ramsay, junior (including his famous portrait of Hume). You can read more about the installation of the exhibition, running until May 2020, here.  

Our friends at The Allan Ramsay Hotel, who run the annual Allan Ramsay Festival, are helping to promote the life and work of our poet in the Midlothian & Borders area. 

The successful management of the hotel and the Festivals led manager Rosemary Brown to apply for a grant to stage yet more events for years to come. The funding body - Midlothian & Borders Tourism Action Group (MBTAG) - offered Rosemay a grant for her 'Poets & Writers of the Scottish Borders' project. More news on this will be posted below as it develops.