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Joining the Scots
The Museum of Scotland made a bold architectural, political and cultural statement when it opened 10 years ago. Juliana Gilling looks at how it might develop in the future
Monumental, confident, contemporary - the Museum of Scotland made a powerful impact when it opened alongside the existing Royal Museum in Edinburgh on St Andrew's Day, 30 November 1998. As a bridge between Scotland's past and its future, it was seen as the cultural herald for devolution.
"Scotland was becoming much more aware of itself as a nation in the 1990s. Devolution was in the air, particularly after the election of the Labour government in 1997," says Mark Jones, director of the National Museums of Scotland from 1992-2001 and current director of London's Victoria and Albert Museum. "The Museum of Scotland reflected, and was an agent in creating, a heightened sense of Scotland's national identity."
There's little doubt that the prevailing mood of the time spurred the development of the Museum of Scotland, a project talked about since before the second world war. "There was a growing sense that Scotland's nationhood was important and that it needed to be understood and celebrated through a national museum," Jones says.
The National Museum of Scotland is one of six sites operated by National Museums Scotland (NMS). Gordon Rintoul, director of NMS since 2002, says it is easy to underestimate how important the project was at the time: "For the first time, here was the story of Scotland and its people, told in one place. Putting it into an international context, you have to remember that the Museum of Scotland opened before New Zealand's Te Papa and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra."
The development was not straightforward for the National Museums of Scotland, which was created in 1985 by the amalgamation of a number of Scottish museums. "It's not every day that you get the chance to build a new national museum and big projects of this kind can be incredibly risky," says Jones.
"Many run into serious difficulties and can cause traumatic change in the organisations concerned. We were lucky that, despite the inevitable difficulties and the stress of opening on time, the project worked well to weld together the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and the Royal Museum."
Expectations were high with prelaunch projections of 900,000 visitors for the new Museum of Scotland and its Victorian neighbour, the Royal Museum, which are now known collectively as the National Museum of Scotland.
These days, we are familiar with bold museum architecture from the studios of Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid. But in the early 1990s, architects Benson and Forsyth ruffled traditionalist feathers with their Museum of Scotland design - a cultural fortress, hewn from Scottish sandstone.
"It's a lovely building which, unusually in modern architecture, is incredibly site specific," says Jones. "The architects thought carefully about where the museum was, and how it could respond to the place. It's a very satisfying building to explore. Although it was initially controversial with the citizens of Edinburgh - who thought it was all far too modern - it came to be welcomed as a new contribution to one of the great cityscapes of the world."
But did the landmark building eclipse the collections? "The architecture was the star and not the museum," says John Stewart-Young, arts and heritage manager at Dundee City Council. "The architects' vision got in the way of thinking what the museum is actually for. It has wonderful collections, but I still find it a very difficult building in terms of finding anything, or understanding where you are.
"It's unnerving when you're thinking, 'Where am I going, should I be here and where am I going to come out?' I've learned from that. At the McManus Galleries development we're going for clear, open spaces."
"Big spaces with cases"
Critics at the time also accused the displays of being set in stone, concerns that Jones believes were unfounded. "A lot of people said, 'Well, how would you change it if you wanted to?' It's a view based on a misunderstanding," he says.
"The architects were victims of their own success. They gave people the sense that this was an integrated construction in which change was impossible. But it's only an illusion... In reality, the museum is just like any other museum - it's just big spaces with cases."
There have been critics of the content, too. Julian Spalding, former director of Glasgow Museums, believes the displays missed the point.
"The museum was conceived as a huge open store; it's packed with stuff and much of it is of marginal interest to the public. It tells an incomplete story because the art is in the art galleries and the faces are in the portrait gallery. [The National Galleries of Scotland manages the National Gallery, Portrait Gallery and two modern art galleries in Edinburgh.]
"Fundamentally, it was Scotland without people. It was as if rocks and machines had made Scotland. As a concept, it was just putting on display what the museum had, rather than thinking about what the people of Scotland and visitors to Scotland needed to see and know."
But Jones says they wanted the objects to be the primary sources of evidence and visual enjoyment for the visitor. "We thought, and I still believe, that objects can bring you closer to the people and events of the past than documentary history can. You know that real people used, made and lived with the objects in front of you, so there's an immediate connection with the past."
Making the story of a nation
But how successful was this strategy? "The archaeological displays are very effective at bringing out the long continuities in the way that people live," says Jones. "We were really only able to deal with the people and events for which there was material evidence."
The 20th-century displays, which included an idiosyncratic selection of objects chosen by Scottish celebrities and the public, attracted particular criticism.
"It was an interesting experiment," says Jones. "Inevitably, the more recent bit of the past you're dealing with, the more you need to change it. Any take on the 20th century will be initial and temporary."
A museum that sets out to tell the story of a nation is bound to stir up passions about its emphasis, says Rintoul. He sees public feedback as a key element of his team's decision-making process.
"When we were planning our first new permanent gallery, Scotland: A Changing Nation [which opened in July 2008], we did extensive visitor consultation," Rintoul says. "The gallery is deliberately very different from the other galleries here. It has a strong focus on the voices of the people of Scotland."
Jem Fraser, director of content for the Royal Museum project, shares this enthusiasm for different perspectives. "There's one voice in the Museum of Scotland at the moment and it is: 'This is the textbook history of Scotland'," she says. "More voices and viewpoints would help us to reach more people with the story that we're telling."
For the next three years the Museum of Scotland will be in the spotlight again, with work starting on the £46.4m transformation of the Royal Museum later this year. Aware that the Museum of Scotland's 10-year-old displays need updating, Rintoul is beginning to plan for their renewal. In the short term, he is counting on public programming to inject energy into the museum.
"It's a living thing and so we're continually trying to bring in new ways to engage the public with Scotland's history. If you visit Hawthornden Court [part of the National Museum of Scotland], on any Saturday or Sunday, you could find Roman legionnaires re-enacting scenes, or Scottish country dancing. The introduction of a series of live events around the museum keeps it alive."
Rising attendance figures support Rintoul's outlook - visitor numbers over the past six years have gone up by about 25 per cent and 842,000 people visited the museum in 2007.
Fraser believes the Royal Museum project, which will be completed in 2011, will further boost the NMS's appeal. "The Museum of Scotland has given us a platform because it tells the story of Scotland nationally," she says.
"With the Royal Museum, we're telling the story of Scotland internationally. The relationship between the museums is getting closer. By 2011 we'll be able to give people a holistic experience across the whole site."
Joanne Orr is the chief executive of Museums Galleries Scotland, which provides funding and support for non-national mu-seums in Scotland. She sees the part-closure of the Royal Museum as an opportunity for the NMS to also look at partnerships with local museums.
While praising the nationals' role as hubs of expertise and champions for the museum sector, Orr wants to see increased partnerships between national and local organisations.
"The experience of working with a small partner, where everybody has to do everything, can be an enriching experience for the large institution," she says.
The Museum of Scotland may have encapsulated national pride during devolution, but cultural identity in the post-devolution era is distributed across Scotland, says Orr.
"We're starting to realise what amazing collections exist here, and they're not just in Edinburgh," she says. "Our challenge is to tap into those resources and allow them to be accessed both nationally and internationally."
Juliana Gilling is a freelance journalist
"Scotland was becoming much more aware of itself as a nation in the 1990s. Devolution was in the air, particularly after the election of the Labour government in 1997," says Mark Jones, director of the National Museums of Scotland from 1992-2001 and current director of London's Victoria and Albert Museum. "The Museum of Scotland reflected, and was an agent in creating, a heightened sense of Scotland's national identity."
There's little doubt that the prevailing mood of the time spurred the development of the Museum of Scotland, a project talked about since before the second world war. "There was a growing sense that Scotland's nationhood was important and that it needed to be understood and celebrated through a national museum," Jones says.
The National Museum of Scotland is one of six sites operated by National Museums Scotland (NMS). Gordon Rintoul, director of NMS since 2002, says it is easy to underestimate how important the project was at the time: "For the first time, here was the story of Scotland and its people, told in one place. Putting it into an international context, you have to remember that the Museum of Scotland opened before New Zealand's Te Papa and the National Museum of Australia in Canberra."
The development was not straightforward for the National Museums of Scotland, which was created in 1985 by the amalgamation of a number of Scottish museums. "It's not every day that you get the chance to build a new national museum and big projects of this kind can be incredibly risky," says Jones.
"Many run into serious difficulties and can cause traumatic change in the organisations concerned. We were lucky that, despite the inevitable difficulties and the stress of opening on time, the project worked well to weld together the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and the Royal Museum."
Expectations were high with prelaunch projections of 900,000 visitors for the new Museum of Scotland and its Victorian neighbour, the Royal Museum, which are now known collectively as the National Museum of Scotland.
These days, we are familiar with bold museum architecture from the studios of Daniel Libeskind and Zaha Hadid. But in the early 1990s, architects Benson and Forsyth ruffled traditionalist feathers with their Museum of Scotland design - a cultural fortress, hewn from Scottish sandstone.
"It's a lovely building which, unusually in modern architecture, is incredibly site specific," says Jones. "The architects thought carefully about where the museum was, and how it could respond to the place. It's a very satisfying building to explore. Although it was initially controversial with the citizens of Edinburgh - who thought it was all far too modern - it came to be welcomed as a new contribution to one of the great cityscapes of the world."
But did the landmark building eclipse the collections? "The architecture was the star and not the museum," says John Stewart-Young, arts and heritage manager at Dundee City Council. "The architects' vision got in the way of thinking what the museum is actually for. It has wonderful collections, but I still find it a very difficult building in terms of finding anything, or understanding where you are.
"It's unnerving when you're thinking, 'Where am I going, should I be here and where am I going to come out?' I've learned from that. At the McManus Galleries development we're going for clear, open spaces."
"Big spaces with cases"
Critics at the time also accused the displays of being set in stone, concerns that Jones believes were unfounded. "A lot of people said, 'Well, how would you change it if you wanted to?' It's a view based on a misunderstanding," he says.
"The architects were victims of their own success. They gave people the sense that this was an integrated construction in which change was impossible. But it's only an illusion... In reality, the museum is just like any other museum - it's just big spaces with cases."
There have been critics of the content, too. Julian Spalding, former director of Glasgow Museums, believes the displays missed the point.
"The museum was conceived as a huge open store; it's packed with stuff and much of it is of marginal interest to the public. It tells an incomplete story because the art is in the art galleries and the faces are in the portrait gallery. [The National Galleries of Scotland manages the National Gallery, Portrait Gallery and two modern art galleries in Edinburgh.]
"Fundamentally, it was Scotland without people. It was as if rocks and machines had made Scotland. As a concept, it was just putting on display what the museum had, rather than thinking about what the people of Scotland and visitors to Scotland needed to see and know."
But Jones says they wanted the objects to be the primary sources of evidence and visual enjoyment for the visitor. "We thought, and I still believe, that objects can bring you closer to the people and events of the past than documentary history can. You know that real people used, made and lived with the objects in front of you, so there's an immediate connection with the past."
Making the story of a nation
But how successful was this strategy? "The archaeological displays are very effective at bringing out the long continuities in the way that people live," says Jones. "We were really only able to deal with the people and events for which there was material evidence."
The 20th-century displays, which included an idiosyncratic selection of objects chosen by Scottish celebrities and the public, attracted particular criticism.
"It was an interesting experiment," says Jones. "Inevitably, the more recent bit of the past you're dealing with, the more you need to change it. Any take on the 20th century will be initial and temporary."
A museum that sets out to tell the story of a nation is bound to stir up passions about its emphasis, says Rintoul. He sees public feedback as a key element of his team's decision-making process.
"When we were planning our first new permanent gallery, Scotland: A Changing Nation [which opened in July 2008], we did extensive visitor consultation," Rintoul says. "The gallery is deliberately very different from the other galleries here. It has a strong focus on the voices of the people of Scotland."
Jem Fraser, director of content for the Royal Museum project, shares this enthusiasm for different perspectives. "There's one voice in the Museum of Scotland at the moment and it is: 'This is the textbook history of Scotland'," she says. "More voices and viewpoints would help us to reach more people with the story that we're telling."
For the next three years the Museum of Scotland will be in the spotlight again, with work starting on the £46.4m transformation of the Royal Museum later this year. Aware that the Museum of Scotland's 10-year-old displays need updating, Rintoul is beginning to plan for their renewal. In the short term, he is counting on public programming to inject energy into the museum.
"It's a living thing and so we're continually trying to bring in new ways to engage the public with Scotland's history. If you visit Hawthornden Court [part of the National Museum of Scotland], on any Saturday or Sunday, you could find Roman legionnaires re-enacting scenes, or Scottish country dancing. The introduction of a series of live events around the museum keeps it alive."
Rising attendance figures support Rintoul's outlook - visitor numbers over the past six years have gone up by about 25 per cent and 842,000 people visited the museum in 2007.
Fraser believes the Royal Museum project, which will be completed in 2011, will further boost the NMS's appeal. "The Museum of Scotland has given us a platform because it tells the story of Scotland nationally," she says.
"With the Royal Museum, we're telling the story of Scotland internationally. The relationship between the museums is getting closer. By 2011 we'll be able to give people a holistic experience across the whole site."
Joanne Orr is the chief executive of Museums Galleries Scotland, which provides funding and support for non-national mu-seums in Scotland. She sees the part-closure of the Royal Museum as an opportunity for the NMS to also look at partnerships with local museums.
While praising the nationals' role as hubs of expertise and champions for the museum sector, Orr wants to see increased partnerships between national and local organisations.
"The experience of working with a small partner, where everybody has to do everything, can be an enriching experience for the large institution," she says.
The Museum of Scotland may have encapsulated national pride during devolution, but cultural identity in the post-devolution era is distributed across Scotland, says Orr.
"We're starting to realise what amazing collections exist here, and they're not just in Edinburgh," she says. "Our challenge is to tap into those resources and allow them to be accessed both nationally and internationally."
Juliana Gilling is a freelance journalist
Has devolution made a difference?
Joanne Orr, chief executive, Museums Galleries Scotland
"Scotland has a really different infrastructure to England and we have a government that understands the Scottish context, when sometimes Whitehall didn't. It's an opportunity to work closely with the government and we've had more investment. We do have to lobby hard to keep museums on the agenda and we are about to go into challenging times."
Gordon Rintoul, director, National Museums Scotland
"The whole time I've been back here it's been under a devolved government. The fact that the Scottish government committed £16m of funds for the Royal Museum project underlines how hugely supportive they are of our work."
John Stewart-Young, arts and heritage manager, Dundee City Council
"Devolution has been a disservice to museums. If we'd been part of Renaissance in the Regions, we'd have got far more from central government funding. Anything that weakens the link between Scottish and other British museums is dangerous. To be thus fragmented makes us even more prone to not getting our rightful place at the top table."
Joanne Orr, chief executive, Museums Galleries Scotland
"Scotland has a really different infrastructure to England and we have a government that understands the Scottish context, when sometimes Whitehall didn't. It's an opportunity to work closely with the government and we've had more investment. We do have to lobby hard to keep museums on the agenda and we are about to go into challenging times."
Gordon Rintoul, director, National Museums Scotland
"The whole time I've been back here it's been under a devolved government. The fact that the Scottish government committed £16m of funds for the Royal Museum project underlines how hugely supportive they are of our work."
John Stewart-Young, arts and heritage manager, Dundee City Council
"Devolution has been a disservice to museums. If we'd been part of Renaissance in the Regions, we'd have got far more from central government funding. Anything that weakens the link between Scottish and other British museums is dangerous. To be thus fragmented makes us even more prone to not getting our rightful place at the top table."