Bringing Scotland’s wilderness ‘within the reach of the people’: William Eagle Clarke (1853-1938) and representations of place

William Eagle Clarke was on the staff of the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, (now incorporated into National Museums Scotland) from 1888 to 1921. This poster presents two related aspects of his construct of representations of Scotland’s landscape

The Scottish National Antarctic Expedition (1902-04) and the founding of Base Orcadas

The history of the establishment of the scientific research station on Laurie Island, South Orkney Islands, is recounted. Its founding by the Scottish National Antarctic (Scotia) Expedition (1902-04) and the subsequent operation by Argentina resulted in it becoming the first all-year-round permanently-staffed research facility in Antarctica. The networks of government and non-government personnel involved in the rivalry between British and Scottish interests and aspirations and the transfer of the Laurie Island facility from the Scottish expedition to Argentine government control are investigated. The narrative is set against the background of the centennial celebrations of that transfer

Recycled Objects: Exhibiting Africa in Scotland.

Those acts of assembling, juxtaposing and exhibiting objects, which constitute the western museum, have themselves been conceptualised as artistic processes which produce the museum as a form of ‘public art’ (Hein, 2006). Such an holistic concept is fundamentally geographical: the place and placement of objects creating new aesthetic and discursive formations which invite public gaze. These practices of space are productive of their site of action as a museum (Swinney, 2013). This paper reports on aspects of the curatorial (sensu extenso) practices and processes performative of the World Cultures’ displays of the newly opened, in 2011, National Museum of Scotland (NMoS), a multidisciplinary ‘universal survey’ museum, which is the flagship site of National Museums Scotland (NMS) (Knowles, Livne & McCormick, 2013). In particular, its focus is on how Africa is presented, represented and aestheticized in and for Scotland. It takes as its fulcrum L’Ange, a contemporary sculpture by Beninese artist Gérard Quenum (b. 1971), which was acquired by NMS specifically for inclusion in the new displays. For one European commentator, ‘Quenum’s work is composed of an eclectic mix of recycled objets trouvés – that elevates the pieces into poignant, mysterious and whimsical “portraits” of individuals or types observed in his local environment. These “portraits” serve as a ‘lens through which we view Africa’ (October Gallery, [2012]). Quenum’s recycled objects, I argue, are emblematic of the very process of museum display. The Museum’s construction and representation of the ‘ethnographical’ has a long history – a public, encyclopaedic, government-funded museum was established in Edinburgh in 1854. The new NMoS displays are but the most recent recycling of collections into new juxtapositions and new discursive formations – the latest ‘lens through which we view Africa’. Drawing on NMS public statements, archival documents, and a semi-structured interview with the Curator of the African collections, this paper reflects on the work done in ‘grinding’ that lens and situates the recent recycling of objects, the acquisition of contemporary art, and concepts of ‘the field’ and ‘fieldwork’, within the context of a longer-run history of collecting and exhibiting Africa by Scotland’s national museum. Hein, Hilde (2006) Public Art: Thinking Museums Differently. Lanham, Rowman & Littlefield. Knowles, C., Livne, I. & McCormick, K. (2013) Multiple dialogues: interpreting ethnographic collections in the twenty-first century – an introduction. Journal of Museum Ethnography 26: 3–13. October Gallery ([n.d. 2012]) ‘Gérard Quenum: Dolls never die’, 20 September – 27 October 2012, The October Gallery, London. Available at http://www.octobergallery.co.uk/exhibitions/2012que/ [accessed 22 September 2012] Swinney, G. N. (2013) ‘Towards an Historical Geography of a ‘National’ Museum: The Industrial Museum of Scotland, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art and the Royal Scottish Museum, 1854-1939’. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Edinburgh. Available at https://www.era.lib.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/810

Edward Forbes (1815-1854) and the exhibition of natural order in Edinburgh

The roles, affordances and social agency of natural history museums are discussed in relation to the writings of Edward Forbes. These signal a motivation, in the mid-nineteenth-century, to naturalize the established social order through the systematic arrangement and display of natural history specimens. The perceived importance of the embodied messages of social order, as an antidote to radicalism and revolution, overrode concerns about temperance and abstinence and immediate fears for the physical safety of collections. The tensions between temperance, and the broader concerns about social order, were played out over the matter of the museums themselves being licensed premises

Robert Jameson (1774-1854) and the concept of a 'public museum'

Attention is drawn to Robert Jameson’s distinction between “the public” and “the working classes” in relation to the audience for the Natural History Museum of the College (later the University of) Edinburgh. This distinction is discussed, together with specific usage of the related term “closed”, in the context of recent theoretical studies on the creation and construction of the public and a public sphere during the nineteenth centur