Scotsman Obituaries: Shiona Airlie, museum curator, art historian, author and artists’ agent

Shiona Airlie unpacks a horse from the Terracotta Army exhibition at the City Art Centre in September 1985. (Picture Dick Ewart

Born in Portobello in Edinburgh, Shiona Airlie went to school in Towerbank Primary and then to Portobello High School. As a schoolgirl she had a spell working in a Chinese restaurant – an experience which ignited a lifelong love of all things Chinese, its history, culture and Cantonese language

She went on to study Chinese Civilisation at Edinburgh University and in 1977 gained an Honours MA in the History of Art. In 1979 she was awarded a postgraduate diploma in Art Gallery and Museum Studies from Manchester University.

From 1975-76 she was employed part-time at George Watson’s College as a cataloguer of fine art slides, and from 1980-1982 was curator of the Chinese Collection – the papers, art and craftworks belonging to James Stewart Lockhart.

A former pupil of Watson’s, Stewart Lockhart was, at the turn of the 20th century, a colonial administrator – becoming the first British Civil Commissioner of Wei-hai-wei in the Shandong Province.

In 1967 his daughter donated his artefacts to Watson’s. Shiona helped secure the sponsorship which enabled the collection to reach a wide audience through the exhibition An Ardent Collector, held at Edinburgh’s City Art Centre in 1982.

From 1985-1986, as Assistant Keeper at the City Art Centre, Shiona instigated the Emperor Warrior’s exhibition. This included nine life-size warriors and two horses – part of the vast terracotta army, uncovered by Chinese archaeologists, which had been created by China’s first emperor Qin Shihuang in order, he believed, to protect him for eternity.

By 1989 Shiona had published her first book, Thistle and Bamboo: The Life and Times of Sir James Stewart Lockhart, the first print of which sold out within two years.

She had also established her own agency, Artis, which promoted the works of contemporary Scottish artists.

In 1990 Shiona spotted the potential of artist Robbie Bushe at an Edinburgh College of Art degree show. She mounted his first one-man show and it was almost a sell-out.

Bushe went on to win a number of awards and became a President of Visual Arts Scotland and a Secretary of the Royal Scottish Academy.

At one point Shiona had 500 artists on her books and was supplying works tailored to the requests of clients in business and industry. One major contract was with Wimpey. She furnished the walls of the showhouse it sited in the Glasgow Garden Festival with original paintings and drawings.

In 1991 she became Assistant Keeper with Glasgow Museums and Galleries and helped establish a unique service through which museums from all over the country could hire exhibitions for their own venues.

At that time these included the works of John Bellany, Ken Currie’s Story of Glasgow and Voices from the Yard – an oral history of shipbuilding.

While working at George Watson’s College Shiona met its Head of Art, Mike Gill, and by 1979 they were married, and son Ben followed.

The family lived together in a three-storey Georgian townhouse in Gayfield Square, Edinburgh, but after Shiona took up her post in Glasgow they moved into a Victorian farmhouse surrounded by 12.5 acres of land in Harthill just off the M8.

One of the first things the Gills did was to arrange the planting of more than ten acres of mixed woodland, thus making a significant contribution to the biodiversity of the area.

Hens and ducks and a kitchen garden of half an acre made for a ready supply of fresh food,

Shiona was the daughter of a master glass maker – John Airlie – and her final task with Glasgow Museums was as curator of its Dutch Glass collection.

From 1996-1998 she was the director of the National Glass Centre – a cultural venue and visitor attraction in Sunderland.

The centre was riddled with challenges. She did not have time to waste and walked out just three months before its public opening by the then Prince Charles in October 1998.

Continuing with her writing and research her work Reginald Johnston: The Scottish Mandarin was published in 2001. Edinburgh-born Johnston had entered the colonial service and became a district officer in China. A friend of Stewart Lockhart, Johnston became the tutor to the last Emperor of China. Over the next decade Shiona did further research and her complete biography of Johnston was published in 2012 by Hong Kong University Press.

in 2009 she published another book: Scotland’s Glass. 400 years of Glassmaking 1610-2010.

Shiona had built up an international reputation through her visits to China and her works on Sino-British history and proved much in demand for talks, lectures, media commentary and writing.

But she remained fiercely loyal to friends and colleagues in Scotland and China, some of whom visited her in Harthill.

Shiona made light of her health problems. She was a long-time sufferer of Crohn’s Disease and in 2016 she was diagnosed with what she described as the “Emperor of Maladies” – cancer.

She had a tumour in her stomach and gullet which she nicknamed Grunewald after a German Renaissance artist whom she had admired for, she said, his rather sardonic take on life and death.

Shiona is survived by her son Ben and his wife Zaike Lopez, mother Elizabeth and brother John. Her father John is deceased, as is husband Mike.

Obituaries

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