- Wikidata identifier:
- Q29015036
- Instance of:
- museum; independent museum
- Museum/collection status:
- Accredited museum
- Accreditation number:
- 462
- Persistent shareable link for this record:
- https://museumdata.uk/museums/q29015036/
Collection-level records:
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Collection history (Collection development policy)
The collection consists entirely of items of Islay interest, which began to be assembled by the islanders who founded the Museum in the 1970s. Significant donations in the first few years included several hundred relevant books and papers, followed by many objects from Islay House (the laird’s house) when the owners sold it and moved to a smaller home. In the mid-1980s over 2,500 colour slides taken on Islay by one photographer in the previous 15 years were donated. Significant individual donations have included the ship’s bell (in 2004) from HMS Tuscania (an American troopship torpedoed off Islay in February 1918); the Tuscania flag(a Stars and Stripes flag made by locals in 1918 for the funeral service and donated in 2018 by the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC); an Islay police sergeant’s notebook (in 2013) in which are recorded the details of the hundreds of casualties from another troopship, HMS Otranto, sunk off the west coast in October 1918; a portrait of Donald Caskie (the Tartan Pimpernel), which was donated in 1978; and a fine 18th-century silver bow1 (donated in 2012) presented for the rescue of crew and salvage of cargo from a wreck.
Source: Collection development policy
Date: 2024
Licence: CC BY-NC
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Collection overview (Collection development policy)
The collections consist of c.3,500 artefacts (from 12,000-year-old flints to the middle of the 20th century), 5,250 photographs (including colour slides, glass plate negatives, black and white prints, and postcards), c. 1,500 books and pamphlets, and an archive of c. 5,000 textual and photographic items including letters, greeting cards, reports etc. All of these items relate directly to the island and its people. A limited amount of written material is held digitally, and a systematic digitisation of the photograph collection was completed in 2021, with the colour slides and glass negatives completed and the black and white prints and postcards finished in 2023.
Source: Collection development policy
Date: 2024
Licence: CC BY-NC