After years of trying, Richard Demarco CBE has finally secured a permanent, safe home for his vast, unique archive.
This sprawling collection of artworks, photographs, documents, posters, and ephemera – which has until now occupied 13 damp-prone rooms at Summerhall – is leaving Scotland. The new sanctuary is at the Muzeum Sztuki in Łódź, in central Poland.
While he is profoundly grateful to have found a place where the archive will be cared for, catalogued, and digitised, the fact that it is leaving his homeland causes him pain. It seems to confirm his long-held sense that he has never truly been accepted; the small boy bullied for his Italian background has never quite fitted in. Demarco’s uncompromising nature and international focus saw him fall out with significant figures in the Scottish art world. Yet, he himself never tried to fit in.
A European identity, found in exile
With the archive bound for continental Europe, the move underscores his long-articulated, almost prophetic belief: “Scotland is in Europe: Europe is in Scotland.”
Driven by the conviction that art and culture should never be insular, Demarco constantly urged artists to transcend Scottish borders. This European outlook is evident in the sheer range of countries his collection documents. When sorting through the material, his repeated, telling query was: “What language is this in?”
The choice of Poland is consistent with his life’s work. Through many excursions beyond the Iron Curtain, connecting with artists “imprisoned” there, Demarco developed sustained cultural dialogues with Polish institutions, visiting the country first in 1968. He notes that Polish is, as a result of migration, the “second language of Scotland,” not Scots or Gaelic.
On the Cultural Frontline
Łódź lies close to the Ukrainian border; it is, as Demarco describes it, “dangerous territory”. Yet he is content to be “on the frontline” seeing this as emblematic of his lifelong desire to push boundaries. He believes the culture he has championed is itself under threat from Russian aggression.
The irony is stark: a city near a war zone currently offers more security than his former base in peaceful Edinburgh. Demarco has been assured that the Muzeum Sztuki can protect his archive. The rapid packaging I witnessed at Summerhall had the atmosphere of an emergency wartime relocation.
In this case, however, the urgency stems simply from the need to vacate the Summerhall rooms, which are to be rented out. Demarco does not wish to remain; the building’s leaks and damp made it unsuitable. In Poland, the collection will be safe and accessible. “People will be studying this long after I’m dead,” he insists.
Given his health, Demarco will lose physical contact with the collection. “I can’t go to Poland,” he admits. Everything will be photographed, but only he can identify many of the people and events captured in the material. Yet his recollection of specific events remains vivid. Of Marina Abramović, one of the ‘big names’ he worked with: “She was just 18 when I first introduced her to the art world—who else would have taken her seriously?”
Nobody cares!
While I was present, several drawers of posters were being sorted. Demarco repeatedly delayed proceedings, compelling the packers to stop and truly look at the items. “Oh my God, oh my God!” he exclaimed, acutely aware that this might be the last time he would see these works.
The contents of the drawers appeared random, underscoring the monumental task of organisation. Amid the randomness, we made a striking discovery: an unmarked brown paper bag contained a work by Joseph Beuys—a clear indication of the significant hidden gems scattered throughout the material.
Though the archive is visually rich, Demarco has never wanted to be “limited to the visual arts.” He has always been interested in “ideas and history, not just art.” He believes contemporary art education lacks this wider context. This, he feels, explains why institutions turned their backs on him. “Nobody cares!” he exclaims angrily.
To survive, he estimates he has had to auction off around 80% of his collection. The prolonged struggle to find a home has been deeply hurtful: “I feel completely humiliated.” Now struggling physically, his complaint upon being asked to pose for a photograph—“I can’t lift my head up”—felt like a powerfully fitting metaphor for his exhaustion.
A Loss for Scotland
Demarco emphasizes that the archive documents thousands of artistic collaborations: he is taking to Poland “all the galleries and artists I’ve been involved with—it’s not about me.”
The collection is a unique record of the Festival and Fringe’s rich history, much of it seemingly nowhere else. Once organised in Poland, it will be accessible—but 1,347 miles away. This loss underscores Demarco’s belief that the authentic spirit of the Festival belongs to a bygone era, prior to the ubiquity of stand-up comedy and the Fringe’s slide into a purely commercial “circus”. He views this shift as a moral failing, a furious denunciation of what he terms the “bitter darkness of the marketplace.”
The lack of institutional will to retain the archive symbolises his sense of failure to educate the nation. “Why is Scotland the only country that doesn’t want my archive?” he asks. Ultimately, he concludes, “we are not serious about art.” He feels he is finally “freeing myself from the Scottish art world,” having been “too much for Edinburgh to deal with.”
The Road to Meikle Seggie
At 95, he describes himself as “facing a penalty shootout.” The intervention of the Muzeum Sztuki, whose director simply asked, “Can I help?” was, for Demarco, “a lifebelt to a drowning human being who was giving up hope”.
In the end, the archive’s migration confirms Demarco’s oldest conviction: art knows no borders. He has found sanctuary, but the outcome is a poignant irony: to realise his vision of a truly European Scotland, his legacy had to leave the country.
This journey places Łódź on the intellectual map of his life, turning it into a crucial location on the semi-mystical ‘The Road to Meikle Seggie’. Though rooted in a real farm on an ancient drovers’ road in Fife, this ‘road’ is Demarco’s core philosophy. It represents a route defined by history, one that deliberately turns its back on the easy, obvious avenues of the commercial art world and instead leads toward the demanding, yet rewarding destination of adventure, risk-taking, and self-discovery.
