University Museums in Scotland - Conference 2011
UNIVERSITIES AND MUSEUMS: NEW RULES OF ENGAGEMENT?
Finding new friends: collaboration between Glasgow Museums and the University of Glasgow Ellen McAdam, Glasgow Museums
Background
Glasgow Museums has an astonishing collection, over 1.4 million objects valued at over £1.4 billion, Glasgow City Council's single biggest asset. It covers an extraordinary range of collection areas across the four major disciplines of art, natural history, unnatural history and science and technology. It is one of the great civic collections of northern Europe, amassed at a time when Glasgow was one of the richest industrial cities in the world.
For historical reasons, very little of the collection has been researched or published, except for one or two areas which have had the benefit of particularly determined and dedicated curators. As a result, the collection does not have the national and international profile that it deserves. During the restructuring following Best Value Review in 2002 Mark O'Neill and I therefore created a Research Section to address the problem. Our vision for the section was closely modelled on the Research Section of the V&A. The section would develop programmes of research by internal curators and external academics. We would create an academic haven where curators could be seconded to undertake research on their collections, away from quotidian distractions such as emails and telephones.
Unfortunately our plans did not materialize as we had intended. The curators were based in venues, and it proved difficult to accommodate systematic work on the collection alongside the public programme. Some curators were less than enthusiastic about the definition of research as `hypothesis or question-based research leading to peer-reviewed publication'. There was even a suggestion that I had made this definition up. Not only was there no culture of research: there was almost a feeling that time spent working on the collection was time wasted. Glasgow Museums has a well-deserved reputation for access, social justice and public engagement, but the process of engagement had perhaps emphasized emotional and aesthetic reactions to objects rather than intellectual curiosity. Of course the community has valuable knowledge and understanding of its own. However, this does not absolve the museum from responsibility for providing accurate information and exciting ideas about its collection. Our audience deserves the best.
To further complicate our lives, we embarked on two massive capital projects, the refurbishment of Kelvingrove and the new Riverside Museum of Transport, which locked curators into the process of producing huge amounts of new content to a remorseless timetable.
The Creation Myth
I became increasingly concerned by what I perceived as an imbalance between our success in audience engagement and the quality of the content we were offering. We have a great collection, but some collection areas lacked even the most basic documentation. I was also concerned that the Research Section was not being given the support it needed to achieve its aims. I was afraid that as we navigated the uncharted waters of leaving Glasgow City Council and becoming a charitable company research might be seen as irrelevant.
Fortunately for me I had an ally in the form of Professor Nick Pearce in the History of Art Department. We had discussed some sort of joint working arrangement between Glasgow Museums and the University of Glasgow before, but for various reasons it had not worked out. In May 2008 I seized my courage and credit card in both hands, invited him to lunch at the Ubiquitous Chip and laid my proposal before him. I suggested a partnership between the University of Glasgow and the new company that was Culture and Sport. The aim of the partnership would be to encourage the use of all the city's collections for research, libraries and archives as well as museum collections.
Nick was favourably disposed. He asked me to draft a letter for him to send to our Chief Executive. I did so. The Chief Executive asked me to draft an encouraging response. I did so. Not very surprisingly, relations could not have been more cordial and the negotiations went swimmingly. A working group was set up, and Nick and I drafted the Collaborative Framework Agreement. In 2010 the Agreement was ratified by both partners.
The Agreement
The purpose of the Agreement was to develop strategic partnership working between the two institutions in order to maximise the potential of their collections as resources for education, research and creativity.
Aims of the collaborative framework:
- To promote the knowledge, understanding and use of Glasgow's museum, library and archive collections as a resource for education, research and creativity
- To facilitate reciprocal access to collections, share resources for staffing, research and teaching, and provide support for these activities.
- To create a physical and virtual Centre for Glasgow Collections Research that will develop programmes of research relating to Glasgow's museum, library and archive collections, across all disciplines and Faculties and including partners from other institutions, the physical Centre being located within the Glasgow Museums Resource Centre with satellite locations elsewhere.
- To create a Glasgow Collections Portal, providing a `one stop shop' for digital access to all of Glasgow's collections and the basis for a virtual Centre for Glasgow Collections Research.
Governance
- The establishment of the Centre would be subject to the approval of the Board of Trustees and the Senate
- A Research Committee, made up of representatives of the partners and external advisers, will steer the activities of the Centre and develop resources and programmes
- Individual research collaboration agreements will be drawn up between Culture and Sport Glasgow and the University of Glasgow or other bodies in accordance with the IPR and commercialization policies of the participating institutions
- Personnel will be recruited jointly under the auspices of the Centre, subject to terms and conditions agreed by the Research Committee
Staffing and other contributions
- An agreed contribution of staff time from Glasgow Museums will be core to the operation of the Centre
- Contributions from other staff and other partners as appropriate
Areas of collaboration
- Research
- Teaching
- Collections Care and Development
- Marketing and dissemination
Progress to date
In some areas we have made good progress. Glasgow Museums staff are contributing to teaching, on the MSc course in Museum Studies and in the Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History. Our collections are used for teaching and research by students on courses in archaeology, history of art and natural history. Glasgow Museums staff have been on UoG field trips to St Kilda. We currently have three CDAs and are collaborating on an EU-funded research project. The Research Section has leveraged around £3.5 million for collections research to date.
Our most significant collaboration is with the Hunterian Museum over plans to redevelop the Kelvin Hall as a multi-use cultural and sports venue. We have recently made a funding application to the HLF for this joint project. The project will provide teaching and research facilities for the Hunterian and museum storage for both organizations. Glasgow Museums will develop an orientation space that introduces visitors to the collections in store and on display across the road in Kelvingrove, and a welcoming, flexible community learning space. This will enable Glasgow Life's community outreach teams to bring in groups to experience the full range of activities on offer in the building. Kelvin Hall therefore offers the opportunity for true knowledge exchange in both directions, between academics and the wider community. It will be an interesting experiment.
Glasgow Museums is not unfamiliar with major capital projects - the refurbishment of Kelvingrove, Glasgow Museums Resource Centre Phases 1 and 2, and recently the Riverside Museum. Working with the University on a major capital project has been a new experience. The hierarchy and decision-making processes of a university operate differently from the hierarchy in a former part of a local authority. We do have some things in common, however. If there is a more daunting prospect than having one's project depend on the legal sections of two major Scottish institutions reaching agreement with each other by a deadline I had rather not encounter it.
Items outstanding
There is still work to be done. It is noticeable that a lot of the research being done is meta-research, either into practice in Glasgow Museums, or into collectors and provenance. We are still seeing relatively little research being undertaken on the collection itself. We do not know whether this is because no-one wants to research the collection because no-one knows anything about it, or whether it is because studying material culture rather than developing theories about it is unfashionable in academic circles. It is clear that we need to work harder to market the availability of the collection as a resource for research, and that we also have to understand academic funding priorities better, and find ways of making the collection interesting to researchers.
