The aim of our annual newsletter is to provide information about the activities, projects and exhibitions of university museums and collections in Scotland and this millennium issue covers the period from the summer of 1999 to the summer of 2000.
A considerable proportion of the cultural artefacts and archives reflecting Scottish life and history is in the care of Scotland's Universities. Both old and new Universities hold treasures of unique value and items of interest to both specialists and members of the general public. Increasingly, the University collections are seen as a resource providing valuable information about the activities of their Universities - past, present, and future. However, bridging the gap between heritage and education can be a hazardous undertaking financially. In recent years great steps forward have been taken in the recording and cataloguing of Scottish University collections and thanks are due to the Scottish Museums Council for their generous support and encouragement for these endeavours, but problems remain, as both the higher education sector and the heritage development sector cope with financial restraints and difficulties. For these and other reasons, the theme of our year 2000 conference is probably apt. We hope that many people from the civic and independent museum world, as well as those from university museums world wide, will enjoy gathering together in the historic atmosphere of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow, in its splendid new Kelvin Gallery, to debate the vexed question of whether or not the Death of Museums is a possibility in the new millennium. Details of the conference are given below.
This conference on 'The Death of Museums?' takes place in the Kelvin Gallery of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow and includes a host of controversial and provocative speakers, prepared to stimulate your ideas on how to prevent the death of museums. The sessions are divided into four main themes - are museums a resource or a liability, can society afford museums, should education or entertainment dominate, what is the role of virtual reality? Further information is available from Ewen Smith (e.smith@admin.gla.ac.uk) and from the Conference web-site which is at: www.gla.ac.uk/ museum/conference.
It is intended to publish the Proceedings of the Conference within a year, and it is hoped that this publication will provide readers with useful ideas on future developments.
A number of lucky delegates will be able to combine their visit to Scotland with an equally interesting visit to Paris the following week, to attend the Seminar on The Management of University Museums, organised by The Finnish Cultural Centre in Paris and the OECD IMHE Programme. This Seminar offers examples of best practice with various case studies and is designed to appeal to funding bodies as well as university administrators and museum managers. It will emphasise in particular the widely varying character of university collections and the problems this brings. Mr Ian Jones of Chadwick Jones Associates in London, is on the Planning Committee. Further information available at: www.institut-finiandais.asso.fr
University of Aberdeen: Report by Neil Curtis
Exhibitions and education
Among the exhibitions in Marischal Museum during the last year was a display of the paintings bequeathed to the University by Eric Linklater, including works by Peploe, Fergusson, Eardley and Cowie. This was supplemented by the loan of an exhibition from Orkney Museums designed to celebrate the centenary of Eric Linklater's birth in 1899. Other loan exhibitions included 'Scottish banknotes', while the Kilrenny Pictish stone was borrowed from Fife Museums. The permanent display 'Collecting the World' is being revised to improve the readability of labels, while the display of Ancient Egyptian material is being revised to make it more useful for school visits. Three display cases have been installed in other university buildings to increase the visibility of the collection, highlighting its potential for teaching and research. This has been enabled by the appointment of a Curatorial Assistant, Audrey Cheyne.
Funding from SCRAN led to the appointment of another part-time Curatorial Assistant, Rosemary Feilden who has been responsible for the provision of 600 full records of items in the collections, mainly drawn from the Scottish and North American collections. The museum's school service has continued, with classes taking part in object handling workshops on a range of topics. With funding through the Grampian Education Business Partnership, three teacher placements of 10 days have been created to create worksheets and information for teachers on Ancient Egypt, 'Victorians' and 'Time'. These will help teachers to make more use of the displays on a self-service basis and so will let many more classes use the museum than has been possible. Two major research projects are currently being undertaken by PhD students in the University - one on the history of the Art Collection and the other a cultural history of Marischal Museum in the 20th century. Members of the museum staff have contributed to teaching in Cultural History, History of Fine Art, Celtic and Continuing Education, while academic staff and students in the University have made increased use of the collections for teaching and research. The collections continue to be used as a research resource by scholars from other institutions, making particular use of the collections of local archaeology and Egyptology, and by Historic Scotland who use the museum for their Internship programme. A training course on Material Characterisation Tests for Objects of Art & Archaeology was hosted by the laboratory during summer 1999, attracting an international audience.
Collection management
In conjunction with Special Libraries and Archives and with the support of the National Fund for Acquisitions, the contents of the studio of Bobby Watson, a renowned Scottish dance teacher was acquired in 1999. Other acquisitions have included additions to the Gordon collection of Scottish militaria and a collection of 19th and 20th century Aberdeen pottery, as well as material acquired through the Treasure Trove procedure. With funding from the Scottish Museums Council, shelving has been installed in the new store and work is underway installing material. This is a major project, involving the cleaning of all items not previously frozen to ensure that the infestation of Australian Spider Beetle is not transferred into the new store, to improve access to the collections.
Documentation of the collection has continued to rely on volunteer staff who have worked on the collections of numismatics and Greek ceramics, while a student was employed to enhance the catalogue of the Egyptology collections during the summer of 1999. As well as completing the SCRAN project, current priorities for the documentation and photography of the collection are related to teaching and research in the university. Building on the development of a data base of objects to be used in the teaching of a course on Gendered Violence, funding from JISC for the £241,000 LEMUR project will enable the creation of teaching packages for nine specific courses in cultural history, history and philosophy of science and history of art and physics. These will use over 3000 digitised images of items in the University collections, creating a resource that will be of value to other Higher Education Institutions and which will also help to make the collections accessible to the wider community.
University of Dundee: Report by Ruth Neave
We were able to record users this year for the first time and found that our exhibition visitors numbered 26,873 and 60 people made direct enquiries to the Museum Service. Laura Adam successfully finished the SCRAN project for thirty items in the medical history museum, which added to the considerable amount of outside funding we raised during the year. Hopefully this new record will pale into insignificance when a bid to the Heritage Lottery Fund is brought to a successful conclusion next year.
The backlog of documentation is all but cleared and we are into 'normal' procedures for accessioning items into the collection. Papers for Registration Phase II have been submitted and we are optimistic that this will be successful. As the profile of the collections is increased opportunities for loans are appearing. This year we had loans to 'Scotland's Art' at Edinburgh City Art Centre, to Gray's School of Art 'Millennium Exhibition' and to 'Light of the World' also at Edinburgh City Art Centre. Spring 1999 saw a selection of works from the Scottish Art Council Bequest in the New and Lamb galleries. We supplied artefacts from the scientific collections for display in the main library, and permanent cases of objects were set up in the main entrance to the University. In the medical history museum Laura Adam created a new exhibition for the year 2000 in the Medical School Foyer, on the history of ophthalmology. Entitled The Eyes Have It, it displays early ophthalmoscopes and tonometers, some of the early instruments used to teach medical students the physiology of the eye, and early cameras and microscopes.
This year saw more people than ever involved with the collections - none of them unfortunately of a permanent nature. This is a situation that it is hoped will improve in 2000. Cathy Caudwell as assistant curator carried out work for 8 weeks in the summer to improve the Zoology Collections. Imogen Evans, assistant curator for 5 months, worked on the Art College collections and helped considerably to clear existing documentation and storage issues. Eileen Healy, a volunteer introduced to the museum collection by SUCCEEDS (Scottish Universities Consortium for Careers planning and Employment Experience for Disabled Students) worked to mark the embroidery collection. This was in anticipation of its use in January 2000 by constructed textile students from 2nd and 3rd years of the course at Duncan of Jordanstone. January 2000 saw the recruitment, via the Training for Work scheme, of museum assistant Donna Lovell, who has helped see through to a successful conclusion the Textile Collection exhibition - MESH, Contemporary Textile Designers explore Historic Textiles - which has been a very successful project, receiving high praise. We hope that an element of the show will be able to tour in the next year. Lastly this is the first year we could offer a project to take advantage of the students on the St Andrews Museum Diploma Course. Heather Greenwood has designed web pages for the Museum Collections.
With the backlog of cataloguing cleared and with many successful projects accomplished, the crowning glory being MESH, the curator Ruth Neave has decided to move on and in August she begins working for Dundee Arts and Heritage Department at Broughty Ferry Castle. Donna Lovell will carry on the good work at the University during a six month contract working with the Fine Art collections. Rest assured the University is advertising for a new curator so watch this space for news. Ruth wishes UMIS every success.
University of Edinburgh: Report by Duncan Macmillan
The Talbot Rice Gallery and the University of Edinburgh's Fine Art Collections as a whole were the subject of an inspection at the end of 1999 by the Scottish Museums Council. The SMC report was received recently and its recommendations are at present being considered. The 20th century Fine Art Collection, housed in the Talbot Rice Gallery, was used in the early part of 2000 as a focus for the performance work of the Northern Ireland based artist Alistair MacLennan.
The extensive collections held by the University of Edinburgh - ranging from anatomy through historic musical instruments to zoology - were to have formed in 2001 the core of a major exhibition Forever in Posterity (a quotation from the University's original Charter). Unfortunately this project has had to be shelved indefinitely through lack of funding. Considerable invaluable research had already been completed and the results of this will be held in safe-keeping in the hope that the project can be resuscitated in the not too distant future. Smaller projects involving the Fine Art collections are in the pipeline.
The Talbot Rice Gallery is about to create an Advisory Board and while the main purpose of this is to support the temporary exhibitions programme it is expected that the collections will also benefit from the higher profile that a Board will create.
Heriot-Watt University: Report by Ann Jones
This year sees the University Archive, Records Management and Museum Service involved in a broad and challenging range of collections projects. A major milestone is the completion of the SHEFC/Non-Formula Funding project to preserve and promote access to the archives of the University, Edinburgh College of Art and Moray House Institute of Education, the Faculty of Education, University of Edinburgh. The project team has produced descriptive handlists running to thousands of pages and over 50 summary guides, available in hard copy form. The guides are also about to be launched on our Web site. These outputs will also contribute to two consortial projects funded under the Research Support Libraries programme - Navigational Aids for the History of Science, Technology and the Environment and Gateway to the Archives of Scottish Higher Education, otherwise known by the sinister acronyms NAHSTE and GASHE. In December 1999, we said goodbye to the last project archivist, Christine Gillespie, who is now regaling her envious former colleagues with email postcards from the Cayman Isles and New Zealand.
Archivist Pamela McIntyre, now the proud mother of baby Ged, is currently on maternity leave until the end of September. In her place we are fortunate to welcome Caroline Scott who brings the expertise she has gained from her postgraduate diploma in art gallery and museum studies at St Andrews University. In May, Caroline took a lead role in organising the move of our reserve collection of museum objects into a new off-campus store. She has now turned her attention to re-housing and cataloguing the costume collection at the Scottish Borders Campus, Galashiels. We are also set to move the rich textile archive at the campus to more spacious accommodation, which will help untap its considerable research potential. The recent installation of new display cabinets at the campus will enable the archive to be showcased alongside contemporary design in a rolling programme of temporary exhibitions. The first in this series - Material Wealth - featured textile treasures from the archive, including innovative printed and woven designs by Donald Brothers and Bernat Klein.
Napier University: Report by Graeme Forbes
Work on the refurbishment of the Edward Clark Collection is now complete, including full commissioning of the new heating and ventilation. Donations have been received from the Scottish Printing Archival Trust (SPRAT) and documents and digital audio-tapes collected by the Scottish Archive for Printing & Publishing History (SAPPHIRE) are currently lodged in the collection.
The cases for display of material from the War Poets Collection have been re-designed and upgraded. Donations from Brigadier Robertson have enabled the purchase of significant first editions and bibliographies. Both the Edward Clark Collection and the War Poets Collection have been registered as participating 'sites' in the BBC History 2000 project.
In conjunction with partners in the Edinburgh Libraries Federation,two bids have been submitted for New Opportunities Funding (NOF) - one entitled Printers Pie: Printers and Publishers in Edinburgh and the second entitled PublicHealth in the 19th Century City
University of Glasgow: Report by Alf Hatton
The Art Gallery's Temporary Exhibition space was refurbished in Spring 1999 with its first show being 'Celebration - Ten Years of Acquisitions', followed by 'Mackintosh and Miralles'. Loans in included a major long term loan of Glasgow School pictures from a private collection. Acquisitions included the George Smith Bequest, an outstanding group including work by Mackintosh and the Scottish Colourists.
The Museum helped to organise over 60 events for Scottish Geology Week '99 around Scotland. Over 1200 visitors took part in the various activities at the Hunterian Museum in September 1999. These activities included tours of the geological displays, email a dinosaur, fossil identification days, and silver panning in Stirlingshire. At the opening of Scottish Geology Week at Dynamic Earth in Edinburgh, Dr Neil Clark of the Hunterian Museum presented a replica, and painting, of Scotland's first stegosaur--like dinosaur to its discoverer, Mr Colin Aitken.
The Museum also saw two major temporary exhibitions mounted: Animal Construction and The Fine Art of Medicine celebrating the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Glasgow's Quartercentenary. Both attracted large numbers of visitors.
The fully refurbished Kelvin Gallery (within the Hunterian Museum) is being commissioned as you read this, and is 'opened for business'. And the business is coming in thick and fast! For this year, however, we are trying to secure as wide a range of activities as possible for the Gallery space, in order to ensure that all our systems work in all circumstances. Full details of exhibitions etc. will appear in future Newsletters, and, of course, on our web site.
The cost of the Kelvin Gallery refurbishment was borne by the Heritage Lottery Fund, European Regional Development Funds, the Wolfson Foundation, and the University of Clasgow's Development Campaign Office.
Many UMIS members will know of the strenuous efforts they put in to preparing a collaborative bid with the Hunterian Museum to JISC for funding to support, essentially, the digitisation of significant parts of their collections. Despite the very short time-scale, the bid was submitted in time... thanks to the efforts of everyone involved and to the proposal co-ordinator, Jim Devine. Unfortunately, the joint bid proved to be unsuccessful and funds will have to be found elsewhere.
Most recently, members may have caught news of the opening of a brand new display of insects at the Zoology Museum, funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund, and the first part of an ongoing scheme to make a significant collection accessible physically and intellectually. The design itself is an innovation in interpretation.
Glasgow School of Art: Report by Peter Trowles
Collections & Archives
A new archivist, Adele Ashley-Smith, was appointed to the School in August 1999. Since then, the School has undertaken a series of major conservation surveys of its.fine art collections and archives for the very first time. These completed reports will form part of a much larger bid-document being drawn up for a school-wide application to the Heritage Lottery Fund. Plans are also underway to centrally relocate much of the collections and archives within the Mackintosh building as part of a future Research Centre for the School.
Exhibitions
During 1999, and as part of Glasgow's celebration as UK City of Architecture & Design, the School of Art played host to a number of major exhibitions. Significant amongst these was Ettore Sottsass, the contemporary Italian designer and Jessie M. King one of the original Glasgow Girls. The archive from Glasgow 1999 has subsequently been presented to the School and should be available to researchers from April 2000. Future exhibitions for 2000 will see the School participating in various art nouveau and 'Glasgow style' exhibitions in London, Paris, Washington and Tokyo,
Mackintosh Building
With money provided by Historic Scotland, further restoration work was also carried out on the Mackintosh Building during 1999 with improvements being made to the basement corridor, adjacent to the Lecture Theatre. On-going repairs have also been carried out to the exterior of the building with damaged stone and ironwork being replaced as necessary. In December 1899 the doors of the Mackintosh-designed Glasgow School of Art opened for the very first time. Exactly 100 years later, on Monday 20 December 1999, the School honoured the landmark event with a lunchtime reception at which Scotland's First Minister the Rt. Hon. Donald Dewar was guest of honour.
Glasgow Caledonian University: Report by Alastair Ramage
The latter part of 1999 was a key time for Heatherbank Museum. The building work for the new gallery at City Campus was finally completed in the late summer and on October 4th the new gallery was opened to the University and the public. On the same day a greatly upgraded Web site was launched. The rest of the year was occupied with a settling in process in the new setting, but did feature Saturday openings in December, for the first time in the entire history of Heatherbank.
In October the exhibition 'Rebuilding Lives' was shown in the 'Lighthouse' in Glasgow as a contribution to Glasgow City of architecture and Design 1999. This was a collaborative exhibition involving Heatherbank, Caledonian University itself and Scottish Human Services based in Edinburgh; the theme was the resettlement into the community of people with learning difficulties leaving long stay hospitals. As part of it, the video commissioned by Heatherbank and made by Glasgow Caledonian students, The start of something Wonderful, was shown. Visitor numbers were good and several of the people featured in the video were at the launch.
The Museum had three staff placements in the months leading up to Christmas to advance various elements of cataloguing; two of these involved exchange students from the USA. The cataloguing is proving to be of great assistance in moving the museum towards full registration with the MGC.
The exhibition mounted for National Museums Month 2000 was 'The Daily Grind', featuring reproductions of prints of working people in London in the year 1823. The theme was the centrality of work in the early nineteenth century contrasted with the situation now. The exhibition, which is the work of several members of staff both employed and voluntary, opened in time for the school Easter holidays. Following the April and May showing, part of the exhibition was shown in the foyer of the University library during June and July.
Heatherbank has continued to attract visitors from a number of countries. There has also been a healthy increase in the number of student parties from colleges offering social care courses. In addition there have been many research enquiries from abroad. The web-site is proving to be a great advantage in this respect. Heatherbank was part of a collaborative bid to JISC in connection with Museum Collections in the Learning Environment (MUSCLE). Partner (Universities were the lead University of Edinburgh, and Newcastle and Oxford. Unfortunately the bid was unsuccessful.
Heatherbank is holding a formal re-launch in October 2000, which will also mark the 25th anniversary of the Museum's founding. The principal guest will be Bridget McConnell, Head of Cultural and Leisure Services for the City of Glasgow. She will be following in the footsteps of her predecessor in 1975, Trevor Walden.
University of Paisley: Report by Stuart James
A grant from a University of Paisley Library Trust allowed the temporary appointment of a research student to start work on our archival collections. The grant has been repeated and now supplemented by £6000 from SLIC to give us a six-month appointment to continue sorting, cataloguing and indexing our collections. Details are also being included in the CAIRNS/SCONE project.
Three additional glass display cases were installed in the entrance to the new Library building and have been used to expand the display of artefacts, models and documentary materials. The University Library remains actively involved with the local history society in Paisley and through its partnership links with public and other libraries is pursuing local history projects in Ayrshire.
Inspired by the success of Marie Hay's 'Paisley Doors' paintings, and having on our third floor balcony a particularly fine window (incorporating Paisley pattern designs into the glass), we have commissioned Marie to paint us five 'Paisley Windows'. These should be ready this summer and are being painted specifically to hang in the area we have allocated.
University of St Andrews: Report by Ian Carradice
The year 1999 was dominated by preparations for the new museum, which is due to open to the public in 2000. Planning permission was granted early in the year for the new building in the North Haugh, at the western entrance to the town, which will contain a private leisure club as well as the University's Museum and Information Centre. The museum will. include an introductory audio-visual show, a 'Museum Collections gallery' containing many of the University's historic treasures, a section on University life and a temporary exhibitions area. Several important items from the collections are being restored in readiness for going on public display. These include oil paintings, prints, an 18th century balance for weighing chemicals, an early lgth century model beam engine, a terrestrial globe dated 1806 and a group of 'caich' balls used in a type of handball game popular in Scotland until the 19th century.
Most of the curators' time has inevitably been taken up with planning and preparations for the new museum, but other work has nevertheless continued. The main exhibition - Flights of Fancy - was on book illustration, mounted at the St Andrews Museum. Otherwise, public access was provided mainly by the usual open days and 'by appointment' arrangements. Public access will, of course, be greatly increased by the new museum.
Full registration under phase two of the MGC's Registration scheme was granted for the Collections, subject to action. We were also successful once again in obtaining grant-aid from the SMC, mainly for conservation projects on art works and for restoration of a model beam engine, from around 1820. Acquisitions included modern art works by John McLean, Steven Campbell, Calum Colvin and Jan Koblasa (three sculptures). We were also given a rare gold medal (one of an issue of two) commemorating Copernicus.
University of Stirling: Report by Valerie Fairweather
The University has acquired two new sculptures during the past year The first is a kinetic steel sculpture by George Rickey which has been acquired with help from the National Fund for Acquisitions, the Gordon FraserTrust and the Henry Moore Foundation. The second sculpture - of Peterhead granite - is on a renewable loan, and was made by the Japanese sculptor Hironari Katagiri in the Scottish Sculpture Workshops at Lumsden in Aberdeenshire.
The remit of the collections curator is wider than simply Fine Art, and a display has been prepared for Elspeth King and the Stirling 2000 Story at the Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling, the subject being Sir James Maitland and the Howietoun Fishery, now part of the University's Institute of Aquaculture. Howietoun has been operating as a fish farm since Victorian times.
Works in the J D Fergusson Memorial Collection have been much in demand for loans during this year. Three paintings are on display in the Royal Academy in London at present and will move to the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art later this year, as part of The Scottish Colourists 1900-1930 exhibition. One of these loans - Rhythm -has been conserved by the exhibition organisers as a condition of loan. Two paintings have been loaned to the Fergusson Gallery in Perth for their Fergusson 1900 exhibition. We are also lending work to the Elizabeth Blackadder Retrospective at the Talbot Rice Gallery in the University of Edinburgh. This inter-university co-operation is resulting in a reciprocal loan from Edinburgh to Stirling. These loans have put a considerable pressure on the display of the collection in the Pathfoot Gallery, so it was decided to use the opportunity offered by the temporary blank spaces on the walls to hang, beside the remaining Fergussons, newly conserved early 1970s abstracts, which were conserved with funds from the Scottish Museums Council.
The art collection has also received a very generous gift of prints and paintings from a private collector in the north west Highlands. This is a very visible and gratifying result of previous visits to the Summer Schools held at the University, where the collector admired the art collection, the care that was taken of it, and the pleasant surroundings. Altogether, it has been a good and active working year for the collections, with loans, acquisitions and conservation. We now have a new committee for all the University collections, which we hope will increase awareness of the potential of the collections and lead to increased funding.
University of Strathclyde: Report by Laura Hamilton
Following tradition, the Collins Gallery has organised a programme of ten temporary exhibitions, most of which are originated 'in house' with complimentary educational activities for visitors of all ages and abilities. Meanwhile, five exhibitions originated in 1998 and 1999 continue their tours to no fewer than sixteen other UK venues throughout the year 2000, providing welcome revenue and promotion of the University.
This autumn, the University will formally receive the generous donation of over 300 paintings, prints and drawings from the private collection of former Librarian Dr Helen Cargill Thompson. Selected works will be exhibited in the Collins Gallery from 21st October until 18th November and thereafter distributed to private offices and public areas within the two campuses.
The task of transferring details of all material held in both the Scientific Instruments Collection and the Fine Art Collection on to computer should be complete by July 2000 and accessible on the Collins Gallery web-site by the end of 2001.
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