Elspeth King

[close] Dr. Elspeth King is a Scottish curator, writer and social historian. She is known for her role as curator of social history at the People's Palace Museum in Glasgow, as Director the Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum, and for her scholarship on the Scottish Suffrage movement.

King was awarded a first class honours degree in medieval history from St Andrews University. After doing a post-graduate course at Leicester University, she arrived in Glasgow to take up the post as head curator in the People's Palace where exhibitions such as Scotland Sober and Free, the 150th anniversary of the Temperance Movement, and Michael Donnelly's 1981 exhibition of stained glass, gained record attendances. This was followed by the Glasgow Herald's bicentenary exhibition, which won the 1983 Museum of the year award. She was controversially passed over in 1990 for the civic post of keeper of social history in favour of Mark O'Neill from Springburn Museum. She then left Glasgow to become a director the Dunfermline Heritage Trust where she stayed until 1994 before becoming the first Director of the Smith Art Gallery Museum in Stirling. She retired from that post in July 2018.