ONE of Scotland's leading contemporary art galleries has been forced to make a U-turn on hiring unpaid assistants after a row broke out on its Facebook page.
The Fruitmarket Gallery of Edinburgh on Monday had advertised an "exciting, one-off opportunity" to install Jim Lambie's art work Zobop for its forthcoming show.
The advert asked for up to eight people to commit to working a minimum of six days each over a 12-day installation period on the work, which is a floor-based vinyl art work. The volunteers, who were to work alongside the gallery's staff, were offered lunch, an exhibition catalogue and an invite to the show's private view show "as a thank you".
Angry reaction on Facebook and Twitter to the unpaid work at the gallery appeared quickly from artists and others in the cultural community.
Steven Cox, an artist, said: "As much as I like Lambie's work, I believe free/unpaid work is pretty terrible during a time of creative/economic hardship. Fruitmarket receives huge funding though doesn't offer to truly support those to install this exhibition by paying?"
The Fruitmarket is supported by Creative Scotland, receiving £666,600 for 2014/15. Last night it announced it had changed its plans and would use paid installers.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article