The James Hutton Institute was founded in April 2011 bringing together the Macaulay Land Use Research Institute in Aberdeen and SCRI, the Scottish Crop Research Institute in Invergowrie, Perth & Kinross. It is one of the largest environmental and crop science research organisations in Europe. It takes its name from the founder of modern geology, Dr James Hutton, a leading figure of the eighteenth-century Scottish Enlightenment. The management and staff have carried forward an enthusiastic relationship with the arts that had been established in the predecessor institutes. Ronnie Forbes spent two years on the Invergowrie site as Leverhulme Artist-in-Residence. Work produced as part of his residency was shown in a series of exhibitions. Specially commissioned portraits of former Directors are also on display and in-house art shows have been held to fuse together a devotion to science and a passion for the arts.
