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www.privateairny.com Private Air | Fall 2020 34 has since grown to nearly twice that number. e sale of the merchant bank in 2000 did not mean the end of Flemings as a force in the world of investment, and a side effect was the projection of the collection onto a much larger stage. Fleming Family & Partners was set up to manage the assets of the family and an increasing number of outside clients. e clan's influence is still strong. Adam Fleming, a former chairman of Harmony Gold, is chairman of Fleming Family & Partners and two more Flemings, Valentine and Philip, are non-executives along with another member of the family, Richard Schuster. e collection emerged from the offices to become a registered charity in 2000, the Fleming- Wyfold Art Foundation – of which Robin, Roddy and Rory Fleming are all trustees – and the handsome gallery at 13 Berkeley Street in Mayfair, between Berkeley Square and Piccadilly, opened to the public at the start of 2002. As a result of neglect south of the border, which had been so ably exploited by Donald to the advantage of the collection in its early days, Scottish art is poorly represented in museums and galleries beyond Scotland, and it is a principal aim of the foundation to remedy this situation. It not only displays, and exhibits works from the collection itself, but also houses shows drawn from other private and public collections of Scottish art and, as has often been said, acts as Scotland's cultural embassy in the English capital. Some of the collection, when not put on display in the gallery, still serves the original purpose and gives pleasure to those who work in Fleming family's offices and boardroom nearby. e whole progress and development of the Fleming collection could surely be offered as a template to any corporation wishing to improve the lives of those working for it, to provide a benefit to a much wider public, and almost incidentally to make a very sound investment. Since 1997, the curator – now Keeper of Art – has been Selina Skipwith, whose connection goes further back in a peripheral way, since she is the daughter of Peyton Skipwith, who for many years was joint managing director of the Fine Art Society, a source of many fine things in the collection. is year, for the first time, the collection will be putting up a selling show, thus continuing the Fleming tradition of acting as patron to contemporary artists. It will be a Scottish summer show, opening with a gala in June at the time of the Royal Academy event on which it is based. is will follow on from the current show Highlands and Islands: Painting and Poems (running to 5 June), which has been selected from the collection by Mary Miers, architectural writer and arts and books editor of Country Life, to coincide with the publication Miers' book of the same name. e idea of a guest curator was taken further in two shows called Inspired, which have now provided the foundation with the book to celebrate its 10th anniversary. Favorite pieces were chosen by artists, curators, 'Seeing the collection gradually building around me I began to take an interest that soon became a passion' THE COLLECTION

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