THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND
BEHIND THE SCENES AT THE Museum
The National Museum of Scotland on Chambers Street is due to reopen this month after a three-year, £46.4 million redevelopment. David Pollock takes an exclusive peak behind closed doors to find out about the new exhibits
A nyone who looks back on a school trip, a rainy bank holiday or an educational Sunday visit with the kids to the National Museum of Scotland as it used to be will surely find that the giant blue whale skeleton hanging in the multi-level Eastern Gallery stands out in their memory. It’s not there any more – instead, a brand new aquatic panorama hangs in place, a spectacular frozen menagerie of life-size reconstructed sea creatures and smaller whale skeletons, a prominent giant squid and a great white shark (both taxidermist’s models) cutting through the air.
There are workmen all around and the
moving around the Museum, to see things from every perspective.’ Across the grand Victorian balconies of the smaller multi-level galleries, it’s already possible to see the collection slot into place, and to feel the exacting spirit of instructional and aesthetic pride that has gone into them. Katharine Malcolm, one of the Museum’s assistant curators, has been working on a section of the 20,000-item, 36-gallery display entitled Artistic Legacies, which places classical Greek and
final installations are still hurriedly being made ahead of the National Museum’s grand reopening later this month, but already The List has made a new discovery on its Friday afternoon promotional recce: who knew tuna fish were that big? ‘There you something,’ communication officer Bruce Blacklaw. ‘That’s the whole point of this place, to show people something they’ve never seen before. Plus every great city needs a great museum.’ you’ve says
go,
learned the Museum’s
The three-years-in-completing renovation project has freshened up the interior significantly, turning the vaults below the Grand Gallery on Chambers Street into a new street-level entrance lobby containing a gift shop and Museum Brasserie, and also allowing for a complete overhaul of the collection using the four million pieces owned by National Museums Scotland. ‘Part of the reason for moving the whale skeleton is that our research shows a high proportion of visitors wouldn’t make it off the first floor,’ says Blacklaw. ‘With this new display we want to draw them into
Italian ceramics
Nazca and Peruvian pottery alongside examples of contemporary art to show how the same techniques and modes of
expression still apply. Malcolm uses the words ‘tradition’ and ‘renewal’ often in relation to her work here, and it’s easy to see how that same ethic might also apply to the new Museum and its collection. ‘Thanks to globalisation and cross- communication what were once separate
traditions are now far more integrated,’ she says. ‘It’s important to reflect the fact we now live in a world where pretty much anything goes.’ She shows us a painting by the contemporary Iranian artist Khosrow Hassanzadeh, famous for his Terrorist collection, and draws our attention to both its relationship with Pop Art and the traditional decorative patterns on Persian ceramic tiles, a selection of which will hang on the next wall. A beautiful black glass bird crafted by the Native American artist Preston Singletary (pictured, opposite) stands in another case, the design heritage which informed its creation elaborated upon by a case of traditional Native American wood carvings and examples of Roman and 19th century European glasswork opposite. These displays will be augmented by touchscreen video presentations from many of the artists involved, the better to aid visitors’ understanding. ‘The work here is aimed at people who don’t know what contemporary art is,’ says Malcolm. ‘It isn’t just avant garde work, it’s everything that’s being produced right now.’
Sixteen of the redeveloped Museum’s 36 galleries are new, and where the existing galleries are about the story of Scotland from prehistory until the last century, these new spaces will, according to the official blurb, be focused on ‘Scotland’s place in the context of the wider cultural, political and natural world.’ Among the new galleries are Discoveries, which houses the repositioned Millennium Clock and a series of displays about famed Scots inventors and explorers, and Natural World, which contains that aerial underwater display and promises some of the more spectacular exhibits, including a life-size cast of a T-Rex skeleton (pictured, left).
21 Jul–4 Aug 2011 THE LIST 13