THE NATIONAL MUSEUM OF SCOTLAND
Then, as everyone who has been in it knows, the Grand Gallery itself is a sheer marvel. The hall looks even more stunning following the renovation, with freshly white-painted pillars, balconies and metal frames on the imposing canopy windows creating a space which is bright, attractive and, as Blacklaw points out, ‘all about letting the collection and the Museum be seen.’ From the fourth floor balcony it looks fantastic, with no entrance desks or hanging exhibits to mar the view of a room with the scale and grandeur of a flagship Victorian train station. From the café, which will be installed on the balcony, visitors can look down on large showpiece exhibits on the ground floor, like a Stevenson lighthouse lens (manufactured by Robert Louis’ family) or the 12,000-year-old skeleton of a giant deer. Or they can just admire the light, tiled Grand Gallery floor, mostly under wraps when we visited. ‘It’s limestone,’ points out Blacklaw, ‘so you’re already walking on fossils as soon as you step inside.’
Café-goers can also gaze across at ‘Windows on the World’, a centrepiece four-storey display of 800 exhibits from around the Museum’s collection, including everything from a gyrocopter to a mineral sample from the slopes of Mount Vesuvius. ‘One of the great advantages of the National Museum of Scotland is that of everything,’ says Blacklaw. ‘If you think of most of the famous national museums in London they specialise in one part of history, whereas you’ll see the world a museum
we’re
under one roof here.’ Opening a window on history isn’t the only purpose of the redeveloped Museum, with around three times the amount of education space, room for planned performance events and a new exhibition area all figuring. Already scheduled are the Edinburgh International Festival’s ‘The Legendary Music of Rajasthan’ series (Sat 27–Mon 29 Aug, eif.co.uk/rajasthan), an exhibition programme commencing in October, and the in-preparation Royal Bank of Scotland Lates series of evening talks and performances. This supplementary programme will be expected to help the £46.4m development attract a projected one million visitors and earn an estimated £58m for the Scottish economy every year, as well as adding to the buzz surrounding the successful restoration of a valuable and iconic public space in the city. Even with the sawdust-strewn floors and the taxidermy wrapped in binbags until certain windows have been blacked out, the new National Museum of Scotland already looks very much like the kind of building the people of the city will be proud to have back. In considering her own gallery Malcolm sums up the whole project. ‘We don’t want to tell people what to think,’ she says. ‘We want to ask what they think of what we’re showing them.’
We’ll soon find out.
Edinburgh’s redeveloped National Museum of Scotland opens to the public on Fri 29 Jul. nms.ac.uk 14 THE LIST 21 Jul–4 Aug 2011
The Grand Gallery as it used to be
‘I REMEMBER . . . . . . the goldfish’ in most cases. Fans of the National Museum of Scotland share their memories of the Chambers Street institution
SOPHIE COOKE
MALCOLM FRASER EWEN BREMNER
WRITER
ARCHITECT ACTOR
As a student at Edinburgh Uni, I didn’t go to the Museum much: too busy with lectures and techno. I started coming here properly in the years that followed. After days of repetitive temp work in fluorescent strip-lit offices, and nights spent writing, I needed that kind of quiet stimulation that you can only get from a museum or a gallery. It wasn’t like TV or anything else. There wasn’t anyone telling you what to think, or when to think it. You could make sense of extraordinary things for yourself. I always had a fondness for the totem pole; how it stood there like a beautiful security guard. And I was amused by the Victorian ram’s head snuff box: a sheep’s skull set with jewels and fitted with casters. Men with lamb-chop whiskers must have rolled it down the dining table, flipped the skull lid open, dipped their well-bred fingers in and talked of women and Empire. I couldn’t help laughing at the poor unasked-for fate of that sheep whizzing up and down across polished mahogany instead of open fields. I’ve seen books made from human skin, beautiful birds of paradise, and mannequins of spirit spouses. Still, my best experience of the museum is one that never happened. I had a dream, and in my dream, I woke up to find that it was morning, and that I was wrapped in my duvet in the middle of the Museum. It was perfectly peaceful, and it was my home. ■ Sophie Cooke’s second novel, Under the Mountain, is out now, published by Random House.
I studied architecture at Edinburgh University on Chambers Street, just across the road from the Museum – or rather, I avoided studying architecture there, skiving classes and flunking hand-ins. Instead I crossed the road and sat fretting in the great court of the Museum, wondering how I could possibly survive in the world as an inveterate flunker. In my existential gloom I took solace in chatting to the great court’s goldfish, watching them swim lazily in their pools. Ah, the goldfish! What those
charged with the transformation of this great building will least want remembered – this great space and this great institution, with one of the world’s great natural history collections, and people like me get all maudlin about it losing its focus on some damn goldfish ponds! But I do love that space. I love the humane, light-and-people- filled grandeur of its interior, and how it contrasts so markedly with the grim symmetry of its exterior. People try to characterise historic architectures as always friendly, and kind to their surroundings, but this great lump gives the lie to this. And I even have fond memories of it that have nothing to do with goldfish – Tommy Smith performing at some big dinner beano, playing a solo saxophone big band with the rolling echoes of the room.
I look forward to memories to come. ■ Malcolm Fraser will be talking at the Edinburgh International Book Festival, Charlotte Square Gardens, Mon 15 Aug, 8.30pm.
I spent a lot of time at the Museum when I was a kid. I used to go during the school holidays, when they’d host art competitions. At the end there’d be a wee exhibition of the pictures. Kids would be scattered around, sitting on the floor, drawing tigers, or whatever else they liked. That’s something the Museum has remained very good at, encouraging kids to take part. I was a big fan of the mineral
rooms when I was wee. I remember, in particular, the rocks that lit up when you put them under ultraviolet light. Also among my favourites were the Egyptian mummies, and the miniature recreation of a goods yard that had models that moved when you pressed buttons. Things that moved and lit up and made sounds seemed very magical in the days before computers and all that. I’ve visited lots of the London
museums, which are fantastic, but they’re always crammed with visitors, whereas Edinburgh’s museums are popular without being over-subscribed. Go to the National Museum of Scotland at any time of day, you’ll never find yourself overwhelmed. It’s like a cathedral, with huge open spaces and amazing light.
Of course, the first thing anyone mentions is the fish; it’s sad that they won’t be there any more, but I’m still looking forward to the reopening, and hoping they’ve created something as impressive as the original. ■ Ewen Bremner appears in the films Page Eight, and Perfect Sense, both out later this year.