Hilary Nicoll is the is the curator of The Museum of Dad and daughter of Dundee architect Andrew Nicoll.  

After retirement, her father retreated to a room in his house in Broughty Ferry, the same room where Nicoll Russell Studios, architects of Dundee Rep Theatre, first set up in business. As the room became messier and her father more withdrawn, the family realised that he had developed Alzheimer’s. He died in 2016. 

The Museum of Dad imagines the things he left behind, artworks, artefacts and objects, as a careworn collection, a museum of sorts, and a space of resistance against amnesia.  

For what is the purpose of a museum, if not to prevent forgetting? To create a place where objects can tell human stories and set them within the wider vista of history and world events.  

Hilary will discuss the objects and artworks she has discovered and has spent the last decade researching. Things that tell of war-time tragedy, student life at Dundee School of Architecture, and, inspired by the utopian vision of modernism, life in London at the heart of the extraordinary ‘sixties postwar rebuilding programme.    

The objects in The Museum of Dad have uncovered stories of loss, sparked uncanny coincidences and, ultimately, created a sense retrieval of creative lives. And through it a new understanding of her family, her father and the wider world that made them all has emerged.  

There will be a Q&A after the talk.