AN AFTERNOON IN...

The Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

(0131-556 8921)

As of this week, the 1998 Edinburgh Festival is well under way, which is as good an excuse as I need to recommend a trip to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art on Belford Road, half a mile from the city-centre. Their exhibition for this year's festival is devoted to Mona Hatoum, a modern- day surrealist if ever there was one and a very fitting intro to the permanent collection upstairs. For, thanks to the gallery's clever acquisition of so much of the Roland Penrose Collection a few years ago, and a recent bequest by the golf-playing, Marmalade heiress Gabriel Keiller, Edinburgh has become one of the world's great centres for the study of Dada and Surrealist art. Particularly worth seeing is Room 22, currently home to Miro's Maternity, two 1930s Giacomettis, Dali's Bird of 1928 (left) and Picasso's portrait of Penrose's wife, Lee Miller. Also not to be missed is the delicious ginger slice from the cafe in the basement.

Richard Ingleby