Margaret Macdonald and Charles Rennie Mackintosh: Partners in Life and Art?

The Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow, 82 Hillhead Street Glasgow G12 8QQ

Thursday, 5 June, 2025, 6 p.m. – 8 p.m.

A talk by curator Joseph Sharples, which will consider the extent of the couple’s artistic relationship. Followed by a Q&A.

“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, Margaret 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 as it is by a lack of contemporary documentation.

In his 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. Followed by a Q&A.

This event can be attended in person at the Hunterian Art Gallery or online via live stream.

Those attending the in-person event will have the opportunity to see some examples of Margaret’s work in our Main Gallery, and refreshments will be served.

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