A LEADING art critic has told of her fears for an archive of work she donated to the Glasgow School of Art just weeks before the fire.
Clare Henry, who held the role at The Herald for 20 years, gave the archive from her long and distinguished career to Glasgow School of Art, where it was to be catalogued and put online.
It included more than 10,000 articles from more than 35 years of reporting from the cutting-edge of the Scottish art world.
"I gave the last things over in April, just a month ago. I had them delivered with the thought 'At least they're safe'," she said. "Now I don't know whether they have survived or not."
A curator as well as a critic, Ms Henry's archive, which includes drafts, reviews, cuttings, programmes, flyers and photographs, was to provide students and researchers with a wealth of information about the Scottish art scene over several decades.
The wave of talented and successful Scottish artists of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as Glasgow's landmark year as European City of Culture, are all addressed in detail in the extensive collection or writings and documents.
For 20 years, Ms Henry was one of the key arts staff for The Herald, writing around 200 articles a year, not only penning reviews but interviews, profiles, and stories on arts politics.
She moved to New York in 2000 where she wrote art criticism, but is now spending more time in Glasgow while writing for magazines in the UK and US. She said there were other institutions, in the US, which could have received her archive, but in the end the GSA seemed to be the "most obvious".
Ms Henry curated exhibitions in the 1980s and 1990s including a Scottish show at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and a Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art Show for the Edinburgh Festival in 1987. As a printmaker, she exhibited regularly in the 1970s and 1980s.
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