Richard Demarco (born 1930) is an Edinburgh born gallerist and artist, who played a crucial role in bringing German and Eastern European artists – such as Joseph Beuys and Marina Abramovic - to exhibit in the UK from the 1960s onwards. NGS acquired his archive and library in 1995. We have made good progress on cataloguing the archive holdings, but the sizeable library – comprising, we estimate, around 14,000 publications – has remained in store since that time.

We would like to catalogue this collection on-site at Modern Two, while the building is closed to the public. We’ll be working in the Penrose Gallery, and will catalogue the books using Excel spreadsheets (which can later be imported into our library database). The work will also involve cross-checking against our existing holdings to identify duplicates.

Due to the scale of the undertaking, we are hoping that volunteers could commit to 1 or 2 days a week for a period of some months. There will likely be a significant amount of publications in Polish and Romanian, due to Demarco’s close links with Eastern Europe: any expertise in these languages would be a bonus!

The project will begin on Monday 14th November and – depending on the speed of cataloguing – will likely last until Spring 2023. We are hoping that volunteers can commit to working on either (or both) Mondays or Tuesdays between 10am and 3pm.

Please note we will accept applications for this opportunity until 23/10/2022, unless enough applications are received at an earlier date.