Norman Reid (museum director)

[6] He was educated at Wilson's Grammar School and won a scholarship to the Edinburgh College of Art, where he studied in the late 1930s and was taught by William Gillies.

Reid also strengthened the Collection, especially in the area of early twentieth-century European art, acquiring outstanding works by artists including Pablo Picasso, Giacometti, Henri Matisse, Constantin Brâncuși, Piet Mondrian, and Salvador Dalí.

During Reid's Directorship the Tate staged a number of ground-breaking exhibitions, including an early presentation of Gilbert and George's Living Statues.

[6] In 1972, the Tate purchased Equivalent VIII, a 1966 work by American sculptor Carl Andre which consisted of a stack of 120 ready-made fire bricks.

[13] When a journalist discovered the sculpture listed in the Tate's Biennial Report of 1972–74 the matter was picked up by numerous British newspapers, with the subsequent hostility causing great embarrassment to Reid, who defended the purchase and the Curators who had made it.

[14] Reid also increased the Tate's earlier collections, launching a successful fund-raising drive in 1977 to acquire Haymakers and Reapers by George Stubbs.