The exhibition “Centre Stage: Portraits from a Modern World” opens today in Dundee

The McManus Museum and Art Gallery in Dundee, Scotland, opens the exhibition “Centre Stage: Portraits from a Modern World” today, Saturday October 3, 2026, as the McManus museum announces. The exhibition brings together treasures from Dundee’s nationally significant art collection with major loans, as well as a specially commissioned portrait of lawyer Claire Mitchell KC — one of Scotland’s leading advocates and co-founder of the Witches of Scotland campaign — painted by the well-known Scottish artist Calum Stevenson.

The exhibition explores the relationship between portraiture and performance: the way artists and their sitters collaborate to create images that continue to fascinate long after the captured moment. It was created to complement the popular exhibition “Curtain Call: Costumes from Stage and Screen”.

Among the selected portraits, standouts include the lively portrait of Dundee busker Lord Mustard by John Johnstone; Stewart Carmichael’s “The Housekeeper”; Alexander Muir’s mysterious “The Visitor”; Gerald Brockhurst’s “The Fan”; Herman Richir’s “Jeunesse”; and the monumental portrait of Syd Scroggie by Lex Braes.

Anna Day, head of Culture and Libraries at Leisure & Culture Dundee, said the exhibition offers a fascinating opportunity to explore how artists have shaped the way we are seen and remembered — questions that feel “remarkably relevant today” in the age of social media.

Admission to the exhibition is free. The museum is open every day from 10:00 to 17:00, and on Sundays from 12:30 to 16:30.