Collection: National Museums Scotland

Collection-level records:

• Collection history (Collection development policy)

  We embody a long tradition of collecting culture and nature for public benefit. Early roots of our collections can be found in those of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland established in 1780, and in the Industrial Museum of Scotland, founded in 1855 and opened as the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art in 1866. At this time of collections of the University of Edinburgh’s Museum of Natural History were transferred, which had their roots in the 1694 Old Toun College collection.

  The Antiquaries’ collections passed into public ownership in 1858 as the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. In 1970 the Scottish United Services Museum (founded in 1930) came under the oversight of what was then known as the Royal Scottish Museum; as did the National Museum of Flight, developed with the Royal Scottish Museum over the 1970s. In 1985 these major national collections were brought together to form the National Museums of Scotland.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2022

  Licence: CC BY-NC

• Collection overview (Collection development policy)

  Global Arts, Cultures & Design

  The department’s collection of around 150,000 items includes a wide range of nationally and internationally important material from across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, dating from the ancient past to the present day.

  Strengths

  The European decorative art collections are the most comprehensive in the UK outside of the V&A. They represent excellence, creativity and innovation in sculpture, metal work, ceramics, glass, furniture, woodwork and dress and textiles. They demonstrate leading edge developments in product design and craft. The collection also contains one of three designated nationally significant collections of modern jewellery.

  The breadth of the dress and textile collection is of international significance and includes examples from Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania. The European and North American holdings include the Jean Muir Collection, the world’s most comprehensive museum collection of an internationally renowned fashion designer, and the Bernat Klein Collection, the work of one of the most highly regarded textile designers of the previous century. The strength of our early collections is also internationally significant, including seventeenth-century examples of European dress and textiles dating to the medieval period.

  The recognised strengths of the early collections from Africa, Oceania and North America are the historic collections that derive from the University of Edinburgh and the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. These are connected to early voyages of imperial exploration and subsequent colonial and missionary activities. They can be traced to key British historic figures including Captain James Cook and Dr David Livingstone, amongst others.

  From Asia the collection contains internationally and nationally significant collections of decorative and industrial arts from China, Japan, Iran, and India, from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, and prehistoric Japanese ceramics and Ainu material acquired from Dr Neil Gordon Munro, which includes domestic and ritual items.

  The ancient Egyptian collection, which contains substantial sculpture, burial groups, and important inscribed material, representing all major periods in Egyptian history. Of note is material from the first systematic excavations in Egypt, led by Alexander Henry Rhind, and the only intact royal burial group held outside Egypt.

  Collections from the rest of the ancient Mediterranean include items of international importance, such as one of the only monumental Nubian statues held outside Sudan, notable ancient Greek painted vases, a significant collection of ancient glass, and a remarkably diverse collection of cuneiform inscriptions, including a monumental Assyrian relief from the palace of Ashurnasirpal II.

  Library

  The Research Library involves around 300,000 items, bringing together the collections of the former National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Museum. A separate library is located at the National War Museum and collections are also maintained at the National Museum of Flight and the National Museums Collection Centre. Library collections have grown in response to individual areas of curatorial research, past and present, resulting in research-level coverage across all museum departments and worldclass resources in specific areas.

  Strengths

  The library collections reflect the strength and variety of National Museum Scotland’s collecting and research directions, ranging from modern research texts to material over 500 years old.

  Our holdings include a leading archaeology collection, especially significant in its breadth and in its foreign-language material, much of which is unavailable elsewhere in Scotland. We house a major collection of monograph publications on decorative arts and world cultures, and many rare and unusual holdings in Scottish history and culture, including topographical guides and local histories from all parts of Scotland from the late eighteenth century onwards. There is a broad selection of material in natural sciences to support geological research, gemmology, mineralogy, invertebrate and vertebrate palaeontology, and contemporary biology. Collections in the history of science and technology are strong in physical and mathematical sciences, including measurement applications in a variety of disciplines and developments in related technologies. The library also holds a major collection of works on the history of museums and museology, including many early works on personal and institutional collections.

  The National War Museum Library houses a wealth of material on the history of the Armed Forces in Scotland from 1660 to the present day, including regimental histories and Army Lists from the 1740s. Coverage is weighted towards the Army, but the Navy and Air Force are also represented.

  Strengths of the archival material for which the library is responsible include Directors’ correspondence, letter books, original plans, drawings and photographs, scrapbooks, and the historical archives and manuscripts of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland. The archive also includes registers and day books from the natural history museum at University of Edinburgh and the original correspondence, notes, and journals of several nationally renowned nineteenth- and early twentieth-century naturalists, including William Jardine and William Speirs Bruce.

  Natural Sciences

  The origins of the Natural Sciences collections of National Museums Scotland may be traced back to the acquisition in 1694 by the Toun College of Edinburgh of the collection of the late Sir Andrew Balfour. Shortly afterwards it was combined with the collection of Sir Robert Sibbald, Geographer Royal for Scotland, and catalogued by him. Although this clearly predates any of the National Museum buildings it was the basis of the University of Edinburgh collection which then formed the backbone of our collection.

  Since then, largely through field work and the acquisition of various individual naturalist collections, we have grown into the second largest natural science collection in the UK (after the Natural History Museum) with over 10 million items. It contains many unique specimens of international significance ranging from Dolly the sheep and a giant clam brought back by John Murray on the HMS Challenger expedition to a piece of the Strathmore meteorite and ‘Lizzie’, one of the world’s oldest fossil reptiles.

  Strengths

  The collection contains specimens of national, European, and worldwide significance.

  Currently divided into four sections, Earth Systems, Invertebrate Biology, Palaeobiology and Vertebrate Biology. Among the most important is the collection of Palaeozoic vertebrates, which is unique in the world as one of the most comprehensive early records of vertebrate life. Collections of minerals, insects, and terrestrial mammals are the best within Scotland. The insect and vertebrate collections are significant as historical archives of terrestrial environmental change, highly relevant to pressing issues such as global warming and therefore to key theme 6.2 above. Our collection of North Atlantic whales is internationally recognized and has been enhanced through collaboration with the Scottish Marine Animal Stranding Scheme. The collection is directly relevant to the documentation of raising ocean temperatures and human impact in our seas and will remain a key collecting area.

  Science & Technology

  National Museums Scotland’s Science & Technology collections of over 80,000 items are amongst the most important in Europe. They range from the very large to the very small; are chronologically, geographically and thematically broad; and play a significant or leading role at each National Museums Scotland sites. They have been amassed since the founding of Industrial Museum of Scotland in 1854, when there was an ambition to display recent technical innovation and industrial processes to students, craftsmen and the general public. Over time, these collections accrued historic interest and, increasingly from the later twentieth century, collecting has focused on the histories of science and technology as well seeking to reflect contemporary developments. Aiming to reflect the social and cultural significance of science and technology, as well as theoretical and technical change, objects have recently been collected in order to reveal the full range of people involved in scientific work, the lived experiences and impacts of industry and technology, and patient as well as practitioner stories in medicine.

  Strengths

  The Science Collections, focused chiefly on the physical and biomedical sciences, include an internationally significant collection of scientific instruments. These instruments range from those that supported academic research and teaching, particularly at the University of Edinburgh, to those used for practical activities such as timekeeping, navigation, survey and metrology. There are also important collections relating to lighthouse technology and early photography. Objects relating to medicine and biomedicine range from medical imaging technologies to pharmaceuticals, veterinary medicine and prosthetics.

  Strengths of the Technology Collections relate to the collecting areas of industry, engineering, energy production, agriculture, communications and transport. The early and boom days of coal extraction and steam power are well represented, while, more recently, there has been significant collecting around sites and industries impacted by deindustrialisation and decommissioning. The collection of high-quality engineering models, many of which were produced by our workshop in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, is of unique importance. In transport, there are strengths in collections of bicycles, agricultural vehicles and aircraft. Communication collections include significant holdings relating to printing, audio technologies and telecommunications.

  Scottish History & Archaeology

  Nearly 250 years of dedicated collecting has built one of the most representative national collections of archaeological and historical artefacts anywhere in the world, constituting a material record of the place we now call Scotland situated within its wider European and global contexts. Our coverage extends from the Palaeolithic to the contemporary, combining collecting disciplines and methodologies in archaeology, material history and decorative arts. The concentration of artefact types and provenanced objects mean that the collections present fundamental material evidence for research in most aspects of the Scottish past, enabling authoritative display narratives and interpretive themes across time. The collection involves over 2 million items.

  Strengths

  Highlights include iconic objects such as the Iron Age Torrs pony cap, the Lewis chess pieces, the Mary Queen of Scots casket and hoard discoveries such as the Blair Drummond torcs and the Galloway Hoard. Recognised as spectacular national treasures in their own right, such objects derive much of their cultural value from their relationships within and across the wider collection.

  Strengths spanning the archaeology collections include assemblages of everyday material from settlements which provide a detailed picture of changing lives and regional differences over millennia, and which contain as-yet untapped resources of environmental data. Hoards and special deposits from a range of periods and locations enable a long-term view of deposition practices across space and time. The collection of human remains excavated in Scotland is a key resource for the development of new knowledge through research and scientific analysis (aDNA, stable isotopes, radiocarbon dating). Over half of the known specimens for many artefact types from Scotland, and many unique survivals, are held by National Museums Scotland.

  Bridging prehistory and history, these strengths persist, while the collections encompass rich remains of the Roman occupation and a wealth of ‘Celtic art’ including some of the most accomplished early Christian stone sculpture in Europe. The medieval, renaissance and early modern periods combine the materials of everyday life with objects redolent of cultural interactions, religious and monarchical power in the shaping of Scotland as a kingdom.

  The history collections were built in large part through specialist collecting in the decorative arts generating strength in areas such as silver, ceramics, jewellery, metalwork, furniture and weaponry alongside numismatics and sigillography. Our interpretation, reinterpretation and development of these core collections builds material evidence for broader cultural and historical developments alongside objects preserved for their known or assumed associations with individuals and events. Long-standing efforts to collect the unwritten history of modern Scotland through the vernacular and everyday have bequeathed notably strong collections in working and domestic life. The military and rural life collections are extensive, reflecting the strength of the foundational collections of the National War Museum and National Museum of Rural Life. Popularly recognised manifestations of distinctively Scottish material culture such as bagpipes and highland dress (the latter in common with Global Arts, Cultures and Design) are well represented.

  Over the last five years we have invested in a programme of collecting in relation to social, cultural and political developments in contemporary Scotland in dialogue with other departments, building well-researched and representative collections for the future.

  Source: Collection development policy

  Date: 2022

  Licence: CC BY-NC