Still Glasgow is a new exhibition drawn from Glasgow Life Museums’ collection which has photography at its core and looks at Glasgow, past and present. With over 80 works, the exhibition showcases well-known photographs of the city alongside other, lesser-known works, some of which explore how artists work with the photographic medium and the city of Glasgow within their practice. 

Fittingly, the exhibition opens in the closing months of Glasgow 850, the year-long celebration of the city’s 850th birthday, and ahead of GoMA’s 30th anniversary in 2026. Glasgow is a city that has energy, creativity, and a history of invention and change. Still Glasgow is a snapshot of its culture, built heritage and citizens from the 1940s to the present day and celebrates multiple entwined histories – of culture, class, protest, humour and ambition – but looks beyond nostalgia and asks how the city can imagine its future beyond its 850th year.

Still Glasgow initially emerged from a conversation between GoMA Curator/Producer Katie Bruce and Malcolm Dickson, Director of Glasgow gallery Street Level Photoworks, after a visit to Glasgow Museums Resource Centre to look at works about the city in photographs held there. 

From this early list of key works by photographers – Oscar Marzaroli, Joseph McKenzie, Nick Danziger, Jane Evelyn Atwood, David Eustace and Alan Dimmick – the exhibition has expanded to include moving image, with Roderick Buchanan’s film Gobstopper (1999), which riffs on the Glaswegian childhood game of trying to hold your breath while going through the Clyde Tunnel. It also explores the way in which artists use the photographic medium, including work by Alasdair Gray and the seminal work What’s It To You? by Stansfield/Hooykaas on the 50th anniversary of when it was first shown in the Third Eye Centre on Sauchiehall Street. whoseas well as photos of artists where they work the basis of Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan’s conceptual artwork- Easels, and Oscar Marzaroli’s portrait of painter Joan Eardley in her Glasgow Townhead studio.  

Still Glasgow includes work by: Khansa Aslam, Jane Evelyn Atwood, Khadija Aurangzeb, Zubaidah Azad, Sadia Azhar, Roderick Buchanan, Nick Danzinger, Alan Dimmick, David Eustace, Alasdair Gray, Bert Hardy, Rashida Hanif, Larry Herman, Shahida Imatiaz, Keith Ingham, Nikola Krugova, Patricia MacDonald, Khalida Majid, Oscar Marzaroli, Linda McCartney, Joseph McKenzie, Shazia Rani, Stansfield/Hooykaas, Nazia Soofi, Joanne Tatham and Tom O’Sullivan, Anetta Tancosova, Iseult Timmermans, John T Thomson, Eric Watt and Matthew Arthur Williams.

A programme of events, talks and workshops will take place during the 18 months of the exhibition and begins with the Public Preview event on Saturday 29 November 2025, 2-4pm