Peter Shaw, the son of a Lanarkshire coal miner, has spent three decades secretly curating what is believed to be the world's finest private collection of Scottish art—over 12,000 works valued at approximately £10 million. Now aged 72, he has announced his intention to gift the entire collection to the nation, asking only for a suitable public building to display it, preferably located within working-class communities rather than established cultural centres like Edinburgh or Glasgow. Shaw's extraordinary commitment stems partly from his diagnosis with oesophageal cancer in 1996, which prompted him to dedicate his considerable wealth from the sale of Strathclyde Buses to FirstBus to building this artistic legacy.

The collection spans multiple centuries and every major Scottish artistic movement, from Allan Ramsay and Sir Henry Raeburn through contemporary artists such as John Byrne and Peter Howson, including works from the Glasgow Boys, Scottish Colourists, and Celtic Revival movements. Despite his wealth, Shaw has lived as a virtual recluse for thirty years, taking no holidays since the buses sale, driving a 16-year-old car, and spending the bare minimum on himself whilst working ten-hour days, seven days a week to research, acquire and catalogue artworks. Notably, not a single work from his collection has ever hung on his own walls, underscoring his view that the artworks were never truly his but held in trust for the Scottish people.