Funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland, Caring for the Collection is a project that will focus on Art in Healthcare’s vast art collection, enabling us to undertake a programme of maintenance and conservation of artworks currently in our art store.
We are delighted to have the support to recruit two technical roles, who will be dedicated to working with collection artworks and improving how they are stored safely. In November, we appointed Giulia Gentili, our Technician, who brings several years of experience working with a wide range of artists and organisations as an art technician, fabricator and artist.
Followed by the recruitment of our Collection Technician Apprentice, Mina Brennan, who will work closely alongside Giulia. Together, they will review, maintain and restore artworks, with the aim of placing them in hospitals, care homes and community spaces across Scotland. In addition to gaining hands on experience working with the collection, Mina will gain a Museum and Galleries Technician Modern Apprenticeship [SCQF level 7] qualification.
As part of this project, and to celebrate Art in Healthcare’s 35th Anniversary, Mina has launched a blog exploring 35 works from the Art in Healthcare Collection and her findings from her apprenticeship.
Image: ‘Who is Afraid of Sugar Pink and Lime Green’ by Eduardo Paolozzi.
Welcome to the seventh blog post from the Collection Technicians.
In this week’s blog post we will be looking at a piece of work by Eduardo Paolozzi titled ‘Who is Afraid of Sugar Pink and Lime Green’.
Eduardo Paolozzi was born in Leith in 1924 and studied at Edinburgh College of art as well as in London. After his studies he moved to Paris and was heavily involved in the modern art movement there at the time.
Paolozzi took inspiration from topics such as science, current affairs, and modern culture to create geometrical works and sculptures. His early work titled ‘Bunk’ was inspired by a quote from Henry Ford the infamous car manufacturer and featured collages made from cut outs of American magazines. It is often said that this body of work was one of the first examples of what we now call pop art. Although at the time Paolozzi struggled to have his work taken seriously by art critics and academics.
The screenprint which we have in our collection is a great example of his work on paper, sitting on the border between representational work and graphic design, his style allowed him to have a wide range of projects from book covers to bronze sculptures. His large scale bronze work can be found around Edinburgh, his large sculpture of a foot and an open palm sits at the top of Leith Walk.
Paolozzi took inspiration from everyday and found objects, you can see how he worked with these items by looking at his studio which has been carefully preserved by The National Museums of Scotland, Paolozzi donated the entire contents of his Chelsea studio to them in 1994.
In this work ‘Who is Afraid of Sugar Pink and Lime Green.’ Paolozzi uses two dimensional shapes in a grid-like pattern, the top of the image looks almost like a depiction of a lab experiment, or a diagram for a modern machine. The bottom half could easily be a drawing for a textile design, something which Paolozzi taught at Central Saint Martins. During his time there he tutored many successful textile artists such as Althea McNish. McNish created brightly coloured textiles which had motifs of plants and flowers from Trinidad where she grew up. She went on to design for Dior and Liberty. McNish is said to be one of the first designers of African-Caribbean descent to achieve international recognition and a pioneer of design and pattern. Her work is dynamic and brightly coloured and highly influenced modern design in the 1950s.
The title of the work in our collection ‘Who is Afraid of Sugar’ points to the growing concern around sugar during the 1970s after scientific findings highlighted its effect on the public’s health, despite these studies large corporations and companies still pushed advertisement campaigns that said the opposite. Paolozzi’s title is a comment on the contradictions between scientific findings and capitalism.
Caring for the Collection is made possible with The National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland.
Thanks to National Lottery players, we will be able to dedicate time to improve the condition of our artworks currently in our store, so that they will be able to be displayed in health and social care settings across Scotland.
Museum & Galleries Technician Modern Apprenticeship is supported by Museums Galleries Scotland provider of the apprenticeship, mentor and SCQF level 7
12 March 2026 by
Amy Miles