What's on
Sanctuary Events
As a University of Sanctuary, we are pleased to host a range of events throughout the year, including annual Refugee Week & Scottish Refugee Festival Events.
Expect talks, film screenings, conferences, community events and more.
Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh: partners in Life and Art?
In this talk, Joseph Sharples, Curator of Mackintosh Collections at the Hunterian, will consider the extent of their collaboration and the character of their artistic partnership, drawing on a range of evidence from their own lifetimes.
Date: Thursday 05 June 2025
Time: 18:00 - 20:00
Venue: Hunterian Art Gallery
Category: Hunterian
Speaker: Jospeh Sharples
“In all my architectural efforts you have been half if not threequarters in them …” – so wrote Charles Rennie Mackintosh to his wife, Margaret Macdonald, the year before he died. But what can we really know about the nature and extent of the couple’s creative partnership?
Some early critics saw Macdonald as a damaging influence, tainting Mackintosh’s ‘modernism’ with her sinuous Art Nouveau decoration. More recently, she has been claimed as an equal but unacknowledged partner in her husband’s work, a woman unjustly sidelined by the male-dominated art establishment. Forming an objective view of Macdonald’s and Mackintosh’s respective roles is difficult, hampered by a lack of contemporary documentation.
In this talk, Joseph Sharples, Curator of Mackintosh Collections at the Hunterian, will consider the extent of their collaboration and the character of their artistic partnership, drawing on a range of evidence from their own lifetimes.
This event is available to attend in person at the Hunterian Art Gallery or online via live stream.
