![\"Benny](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/6cd69a87-bc96-4002-9826-717ba0741595.jpg\")
<\/p>\n\u200bBenny Higgins has had a finger in so many Scottish pies, it is hard to know where to begin. Standard Life, Tesco Bank, Scottish National Investment Bank, Buccleuch Estates, Sistema Scotland. The Festival Fringe, Fine Art Society, the National Galleries of Scotland (NGS) \u2014 in his time, he has presided over all of them. <\/p>\n
The one that has meant most to him is the one he has decided to hand over. This year he will step down from NGS, where he has been trustee and chair for 12 years, a period in which the galleries have struggled with a funding crisis so severe that at one stage it had to close the doors on one of its modern art galleries. He has much to say about that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been very lucky to have been able to do lots of different things but I honestly think the day I got the call to say that I was becoming the chair [of the NGS] was the proudest moment of my life,\u201d Higgins says.<\/p>\n
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Higgins despairs of the way the Scottish government views the arts<\/p>\n
BIG SCOTLAND<\/p>\n
He recalls being told by his friend, the late \u200bSir Angus Grossart, he was probably not going to get the job and to prepare himself for disappointment, so when the invitation came it was unexpected. Now, as he moves on, he feels not only a sense of pride but \u201ca keen sense of loss\u201d.<\/p>\n
That may be because it is the kind of job he could not have begun to contemplate as he grew up on a housing scheme in Toryglen, Glasgow, where his father was a waiter and his mother worked in a butcher\u2019s shop. In those days, his best hope of advancement lay as a promising footballer with the Celtic youth team.<\/p>\n
\u2022 King Charles named royal patron of National Galleries of Scotland<\/a><\/p>\n However, his grandfather, a docker on Clydeside, was of that generation of working-class intellectuals who took a keen interest in books. \u201cI was one of 18 grandchildren and I was the only one that he took an interest in,\u201d Higgins says.<\/p>\n \u201cHe wrote a letter to me when I was 15 which began with the words, \u2018As I reach the last few furlongs of my life, I want to write to explain why I would like you to read and I\u2019ve attached a list of authors and books that I want you to read through. But please, if you\u2019re reading a book and you\u2019re not enjoying it, put it down and find another one\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Higgins launching a community football programme with Craig Levein, left<\/p>\n TOM FARMER\/THE SUN<\/p>\n That, says Higgins, now 64, \u201cwas very good advice\u201d\u200b. Books diverted him from football to the arts and, though he read mathematics at Glasgow University and went on to become an actuary, he learnt to draw and spent many hours at the Kelvingrove Museum<\/a>, where he acquired a love of pictures that has never left him.<\/p>\n \u2022 Scotland wins UK culture war with most museums per head<\/a><\/p>\n \u201cI have a genuine passion for art itself,\u201d he says, \u201cbut I\u2019ve also got a passion for the benefit it brings to people \u2014 the idea that art is for everybody. I think if\u200b anybody, from any walk of life, were to walk into a Caravaggio exhibition and have it explained to them, they would love it.\u201d<\/p>\n He is particularly thrilled that, as he hands over, the current Andy Goldsworthy exhibition at the national gallery in Edinburgh<\/a> is drawing record crowds. \u201cI don\u2019t think Goldsworthy is a household name,\u201d Higgins says, \u201cbut he\u2019s an amazing artist and that show is just doing so well. It gives me a sense of reassurance about the human condition.\u201d<\/p>\n Which is why he despairs of the way the Scottish government views the arts. The national galleries, he points out, are \u201cstructurally underfunded\u201d, their staffing costs rising by 53 per cent in five years while funding has increased by only 44 per cent. The cost of the entire galleries\u2019 estate has doubled in that period \u2014 mainly because of utilities \u2014 and there is a \u00a317 million backlog in funds needed for maintenance and weatherproofing. Meanwhile, the government has called for increased efficiencies as a means of saving costs.\u200b<\/p>\n Andy Goldsworthy\u2019s exhibition at the National Gallery is drawing big crowds<\/p>\n STUART ARMITT<\/p>\n This week Anne Lyden\u200b, the\u200b NGS director-general, told MSPs she could not \u201chonestly\u201d rule out closing galleries after years of \u201csystemic underfunding\u201d. \u200bNGS runs several galleries in Scotland, including the National, Portrait, Modern One and Modern Two.<\/p>\n \u201cThey demand efficiencies but efficiencies are just a euphemism for cost-cutting,\u201d \u200bs\u200bays Higgins. \u201cWhat we get is propaganda about the fact that [ministers] think the arts are important but you can\u2019t judge people by what they say. You have to judge them from their actions.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Craig](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/03666c60-2d0c-4bab-8989-17db53fa959a.jpg\")
<\/p>\n![\"Andy](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/c0a3584b-9ae7-48f7-ae5a-d1c0e1fc1198.jpg\")
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