Elspeth King, curator
Elspeth King (1949-2025) graduated with a MA in Mediaeval History in 1971. Working at museums in Glasgow, Dunfermline, and Stirling, King was central to redefining the preservation of public heritage and social history in Scotland.
Elspeth King arrived at the University of St Andrews to study Mediaeval History in 1967. She was awarded the Mary Anderson Prize in Scottish History in 1968-69, and graduated with first class Honours in 1971. She then went on to complete a postgraduate course in museum studies at the University of Leicester.
“From the age of about six, I wanted to work in a museum,” King said, in an interview on Good Morning Scotland.[1] Living out her childhood dream, she began her career at the People’s Palace in Glasgow, where she worked for sixteen years. At the helm, she transformed the museum into a living record of the city’s social history.
King was born in Lochore, Fife, into a working-class community. While Lochore didn’t have a museum of its own, the town shaped King’s appreciation for uncovering overlooked histories. Her curatorial work centred on local communities, building on the belief that, the everyday lives of working people deserved to be preserved and historicised. In the words of Sorcha Dallas, “King brought new energy and a conviction that the city’s own people – its shipbuilders, factory workers, musicians and market traders – should be at the centre of its story.”[2] In doing so, King’s work brought historiographical questions into public discourse, challenging notions about what objects, stories, and communities belong in a museum.
King believed passionately in “the power of heritage and community voices to shape a fairer, more compassionate city.”[3] Her work at the museum involved archiving and curating this heritage, as well as deep engagement with the community. In addition to broadening collections at the People’s Palace, King also built partnerships with schools and community groups. For King, museums served as “secular cathedrals”, non-religious and non-political spaces with great potential to build community links across socio-cultural divides.[4] Her work created a space for the masses to see their lives, histories, and culture reflected in spaces generally reserved for relics of high politics and high art.
This manifested in innovative, groundbreaking exhibitions and events. In 1975, one of King’s first exhibition, which showcased Billy Connoly’s Banana Boots, was the subject of great public debate. For Connoly, these efforts were central to King’s legacy in creating a “Glasgow museum with Glasgow things.”[5] Presenting artefacts that were often controversial, King redefined the parameters of historical value. For her, it was important to collect material related to the “ordinary work-a-day lives of the people of Glasgow.”[6] This included items like docker’s hooks. “The docker’s hook was the thing which docker’s would pawn to survive till the next week,” King explained.[7] “It was his working implement, but nobody ever thought of collecting that before.”[8]
Among other challenges, King’s directorship at the People’s Palace, involved a long campaign to keep the museum from closure. In the late 1970s she led opposition to a motorway project that threatened to demolish the Museum. This was followed by the People’s Palace winning European Museum of the Year in 1981 and British Museum of the Year in 1983. King’s vision involved interrogating the past, but also looking to the future. Her time at the People’s Palace was a time of redevelopment and demolition for the city of Glasgow. Here, King saw the importance of reflecting on what artefacts of the present would be of historical value in the future. King recognised “a whole world to collect of […] tiled shops and architectural features, and stained glass from Churches,” building up a significant collection to chronicle the changing landscapes of the city.[9]
Paired with her curatorial duties, Smith also conducted important research that was central to the recovery of Scotland’s feminist history. Through archival work and the collection of oral histories, Smith highlighted the role of Scottish women such as Helen Crawfurd, Ethel Moorhead, Frances Parker and Janie Allan, in the fight for the vote. She chronicled the experiences of these women fighting, facing arrest, and enduring violence for political equality. King’s work was important to countering Scotland’s marginalisation within the historiography of the British suffragette movement.
After her revolutionary stint at the People’s Palace, in 1990, King joined the Dunfermline Heritage Trust. Here, she worked to restore Abbot House, the oldest secular building in Dunfermline. A site deeply rooted in local history, King’s vision worked to present broader links between the local, national, and international.
In 1994, she continued on this mission at the Smith Art Gallery and Museum, Stirling. Curating collections that straddled the international and local, King, situated Stirling’s local history within a global context. “It’s amazing what we do have, we have collections from all over the world that we haven’t even looked at yet, a whole world of exploration, because people from Stirling have been all over the world,” she explained.[10] Within these stories, King sought to centre Stirling, “we’re a special kind of town and we want to impart that to visitors.”[11] King worked at the Smith Gallery for 24 years, before retiring in 2018.
King passed away on 16 November, 2025. She left behind a legacy that reflected her conviction in, “a wonderful world out there to be recorded and curated and appreciated and re-interpreted.”[12]
This story was written in spring 2026 by Mrunmayi Kamerkar, MA International Relations and Modern History (2027)
[1] ‘Long Interview: Dr Elspeth King’, BBC Radio Scotland, c.2018 https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[2] Obituary of Elspeth King, The Guardian 16 Nov. 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/nov/16/elspeth-king-obituary. See also obituary in The Courier, 5 Nov. 2025, https://www.thecourier.co.uk/fp/obituaries/5365306/elspeth-king-stirling-dunfermline-museum-legacy/
[3] ‘Remembering Elspeth King’, c.2025 https://www.govanhillbaths.com/remembering-elspeth-king-curator-historian-and-friend-to-govanhill-baths/
[4] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[5] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[6] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[7] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[8] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[9] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[10] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[11] https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g
[12]https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p06g5m8g