Dr Samuel Gallacher is Keeper of the Burrell Collection in Glasgow. The Burrell Collection is a fine and decorative arts museum that houses the 9,000-object collection of Sir William and Constance Burrell. Originally opened in 1983 and reopened in March 2022 following a major refurbishment and radical redisplay, the museum won Art Fund Museum of the Year 2023. The collection includes one of Europe’s most significant holdings of Chinese and Islamic art, as well as some of the world’s finest medieval stained glass and tapestries, paintings by Old Masters and Glasgow Boys, a significant French impressionist collection centred on the work of Degas, and the UK’s largest collection of sculpture by Rodin.
Dr Gallacher spent six years with the National Trust for Scotland, including time responsible for Broughton House in Kirkcudbright, the home and collection of Glasgow Boy, E. A. Hornel, and more recently, leading Pollok House with its temporary exhibition programme and the Stirling Maxwell Collection of Old Master Paintings. Prior to this, he was Assistant Director of the Medici Archive Project in Florence, Italy. His specialism is Italian Renaissance art, classical art and archaeology, and the history of collecting. His doctorate from IMT Lucca focussed on the art of gift exchange in sixteenth-century Italy, namely the depiction and memorialisation of acts of material exchange, as well as the significance of artworks as gifted objects.
He is passionate about cultural exchange, and demonstrating how art museums can provide a space for dialogue and discovery. He is a champion of finding new ways for museums to be relevant to everyone, and in particular, finding ways in which fine and decorative art collections can contribute to major issues facing society, such as inclusion and the climate crisis.
