Seeds of Thought: A Lunchtime Talk with Murdo Macdonald

Rannoch Moor as Watershed: Mind and Nature in Scottish Art

Murdo Macdonald is author of Scottish Art (Thames and Hudson, 2000, 2021), Patrick Geddes’s Intellectual Origins (Edinburgh University Press, 2020), and Ruskin’s Triangle (Ma Bibliothèque, 2021). Recent chapters include ‘Robert Burns and the Visual Arts: Portraiture, National Landscapes, and the Context of Monuments’ in The Oxford Handbook of Robert Burns, (Oxford University Press, 2024) and ‘A basis for Celtic Revival Art in Scotland’ in Irish and Scottish Art, c. 900–1900: Survivals and Revivals (Edinburgh University Press, 2024). He is professor emeritus of History of Scottish Art at the University of Dundee, an honorary member of the Royal Scottish Academy, and an honorary fellow of the Association for Scottish Literature.

About Seeds of Thought

Over the coming months, we invite you to a menu of fascinating ideas over lunch. In our talks, we invite speakers whose research explores our relationship to time and place through a variety of disciplines, ranging from biology, geology, and anthropology to art history or architecture: together, we consider the forces that shape life on our world and beyond, and ways of engaging with environmental shifts on various scales in both practical and imaginative ways.

Between October and December, we are delighted to be joined by Mary Arnold-Foster, Tim Ingold and Murdo Macdonald.

Coffee, tea, and water will be available, with sandwiches for pre-order at the Visitor Centre. Free for St Andrews Botanic Garden Friends Members, £3 for visitors