27 August 2017
Hunterian Art Gallery
Admission free

Medals are just one artistic medium through which an individual or event can be remembered, celebrated, or even satirised and used as propaganda.

One of the Enlightenment’s pioneering medical and scientific figures was Dr William Hunter (1718 – 1783), whose extraordinary collections are the foundation of The Hunterian. This is the first ever exhibition dedicated to exploring British medals acquired by Hunter in the last thirteen years of his life.

Hunter collected for pleasure, but he also saw the potential that medals could play in what he described as ‘the illustration and confirmation of history’. He believed passionately that the continued expansion of his collection was a public duty, and that when the time came for the items to be donated to the University of Glasgow upon his death, they were to be used ‘for the improvement of knowledge’.

The Hunterian, University of Glasgow, University Avenue, Glasgow G12 8QQ