Celebrating links with Geddes

The University is to honour the 150th anniversary of one of its most distinguished early professors, Sir Patrick Geddes, with a 'Geddes celebration' on the afternoon of Friday 18 June.

Geddes - a highly creative thinker and talented polymath who has left his mark on subjects as diverse as botany, geography, arts and town planning - was first Professor of Botany at University College Dundee serving for 30 years from 1888.

The highlight of the afternoon festival is a lecture by distinguished art historian and critic Professor Duncan Macmillan, titled 'Patrick Geddes and the Necessity of Art'. Professor Macmillan, whose major book 'Scottish Art 1460-2000' has made a seminal contribution to the history of Scottish art, is director of the Talbot Rice Gallery, and has suggested that Geddes is a fundamental influence on modern Scottish art.

The lecture will be followed by short showcase presentations on aspects of Geddes the Generalist led by Professor of History of Scottish Art Murdo MacDonald, including an examination of Geddes' ideas which continue to inspire today's University campus strategy.

Venue for the lecture (2pm) and presentations (3.30 pm) is the historic listed lecture theatre in the Carnelley Building, with refreshments in the new Link Building and on the College Green.

A short video on Geddes, which was shown recently as part of the 'Patrick Geddes: The French Connection' exhibition in the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, will also be on view. The video was produced by Asylum Pictures in association with Napier University.

The afternoon's events will be preceded by a lively, themed campus walk, 'Patrick Geddes & the Gardens of University College Dundee'.

The walk will be led by University Museum Curator Matthew Jarron and starts (1pm) and finishes at the Tower Foyer.

Come and learn more about this fascinating character, his radical ideas, brilliant and maddening lectures, about why this anniversary is being celebrated from Japan and India to Edinburgh, Montpellier and Ballater and why the Dundee years have been regarded as crucial to his reputation as "one of the few men of indisputable genius produced by Britain in (his) time" - SK Ratcliffe, The Nation.

To book your (free) place at this afternoon event please email b.m.smeaton@dundee.ac.uk

Two exhibitions to mark the Geddes anniversary are also in preparation. From the end of May until 21 June, the Tower Foyer Gallery will host a display on Geddes' Dundee years, created by Archive Services using rarely-seen material from their collections. In November, Curator of Museum Services Matthew Jarron will be staging a major show at McManus Galleries entitled "The Artist and the Thinker2, examining the special relationship between Geddes and the Celtic revivalist painter John Duncan.