Details

Object type

trunk

Title

Marianne Grant's trunk

Artist/Maker

Marianne Grant owner

Culture/School

Czech

Place Associated

Czech Republic, Prague (place associated)

Date

1930s

Materials

wood, metal

Dimensions

overall: 517 mm x 872 mm x 514 mm

Description

When Marianne Grant was forcibly taken to Theresienstadt concentration camp-ghetto in April 1942, she hid her artwork from her student days at Studio Rotter in this trunk, entrusting it with neighbours in Prague. They kept it safe until after the war and she was reunited with it in 1946, when she briefly returned to Prague with her mother. They were at this time refugees living in Gothenburg in Sweden, where Marianne had set up a design business making Christmas mats. She went on to use the trunk again to hide her artwork, not just her student designs, but the Holocaust artworks she had made during her imprisonment in Theresienstadt and Bergen-Belsen (none from Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp or Neuengamme slave labour camps survive), and some of her festive mats. It was kept in her attic in Glasgow.

Marianne came to Glasgow in 1951, marrying her pen-pal Jack Grant (1921–1986), a German refugee who had come to Scotland in 1939 as part of the Kindertransport rescue missions. They settled first in Battlefield and then Newton Mearns, where Jack became the minister in the local synagogue. For a short while in the 1950s Marianne took evening classes at The Glasgow School of Art but abandoned her art studies to focus on being a wife and mother. Her Holocaust artworks remained hidden in this trunk, her experiences not spoken of.

The remarkable contents of Marianne’s trunk only came to light in the late 1980s when she lent some of her Holocaust artwork to an exhibition in London, Remembering for the Future (1988), an exhibition which came to Glasgow in 1990. In 2002-03 a further exhibition of her artwork was held in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum and then in the City Art Centre in Edinburgh and a slim book was published to coincide. Marianne was granted Freedom of the City (East Renfrewshire) in 2003 in recognition of her efforts to raise Holocaust awareness and in 2004, thanks to the support of the National Lottery Heritage Fund, Art Fund and National Fund for Acquisitions, Glasgow Museums purchased her art collection (74 artworks and this trunk) for the city. Marianne died on 11 December 2007 at the age of 86. Today this trunk, along with a selection of Marianne’s artwork, is on permanent display in the Conflict and Consequence gallery in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Credit Line/Donor

The Marianne Grant Holocaust artworks collection was purchased in 2004 with grant aid assistance from The Heritage Lottery Fund, The National Art Collections Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions.

Collection

Marianne Grant Holocaust Artworks Collection

ID Number

PP.2005.38.43

Location

In storage