Twilight Tour – House for an Art Lover folios
To celebrate Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival 2026, join Nicky Imrie behind the scenes in The Hunterian’s Kelvin Hall stores and explore the House for an Art Lover folios by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott and Leopold Bauer.
Date: Wednesday 16 September 2026
Time: 17:15 - 18:00
Venue: Kelvin Hall
Category: Hunterian
Speaker: Dr Nicky Imrie
To celebrate Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival 2026, join Nicky Imrie to go behind the scenes in The Hunterian’s Kelvin Hall stores and explore the House for an Art Lover folios by Charles Rennie Mackintosh, English-Manx architect Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott and Viennese architect Leopold Bauer.
Published in 1902 by Alexander Koch of Darmstadt and showcased at the International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin that same year, the folios offer a valuable snapshot of emerging architecture and decorative art.
Find out about the 1901 House for an Art Lover competition, how Mackintosh and Margaret Macdonald became involved, their creative partnership, and how the designs relate to Mackintosh’s wider body of work. You’ll also hear about the production of the folios, as well as the joys and challenges of researching Mackintosh and early 20th-century architecture and design.
With a nod to this year’s Glasgow Doors Open Days Festival theme, Glasgow Goes Out, we’ll also consider how houses for art lovers offered vibrant, albeit exclusive, spaces for entertaining and fostering creative and social exchange.
Ticket Information
This event is free, but a £5 booking deposit is required to reserve your spot. All deposits will be refunded upon attendance of the session.
If the deposit is a barrier to you attending, please get in touch via hunterian-events@glasgow.ac.uk
Book your place via Eventbrite.
Biography
Dr Nicky Imrie was the postdoctoral researcher on the Mackintosh Architecture project in 2010–13. Back then, she researched the House for an Art Lover competition as well as Mackintosh’s other work and his connections in Europe and made a fascinating research trip to Berlin, Dresden and Vienna in 2012 that traced significant correspondence and print-media coverage.
Nicky’s varied career before and since Mackintosh Architecture has comprised academic architectural and medical-history research on Vienna and Central Europe, translation from German to English, community engagement with built heritage in Scotland, and collections engagement in museums, archives and libraries in Vienna, London and Glasgow. Today, you can find her in the Art and Design department at Edinburgh Central Library.
About Twilight Tours
The Twilight Tours are an opportunity to go behind-the-scenes in The Hunterian collections to explore objects and artworks that are not currently on public display.
Each tour explores a different topic and area of our collection, ranging from geology, coins and medals, Scottish printmaking and more! The theme for each session will be announced soon.
Venue Information
This session will take place in the Collections Centre at Kelvin Hall. Please meet in the reception area of Kelvin Hall.
For more details on how to get here, and venue accessibility information, click here to visit Kelvin Hall's website.
Food and drink are not allowed in the Collections Centre, and bags and coats will need to be stored away. We will have free locker space available for you to safely leave your belongings.