A visitor returning to the newly refurbished National Museum of Scotland would certainly be taken aback: how the hell do I get in and why are there so many people in here on such a beautiful day? I used to walk past it on my way home from work. They had late opening on a Tuesday and if it was raining I would go in for a wander. It was badly lit, badly organised and there had been repeated attempts to modernise which were utterly useless.
There was however a masterplan to put things right: the neighbouring site was to become home to the Museum of Scotland and it would eventually link to the original Venetian inspired Victorian building. So out went the flea-bitten taxidermy, fusty display cases, stupid mezzanine levels and water features and in came the clarity of a well designed space and the second most important thing in a museum: light.
The entrance has been reworked so you go in at basement level and walk up to the splendour of the Grand Gallery which was bathed with dazzling sunlight on Saturday, the day after it had re-opened. The place was packed out so we only got about halfway around the exhibits.
Being a relatively small museum it keeps the quality up and the repetition down so it’s a child friendly place. The galleries have been opened up vertically to create neck-craning spaces filled with suspended exhibits. There are good exhibits on the ancient world and on design in the home. You can go up to a rooftop terrace for lunch and a fantastic viewing platform giving great views of the city. And it’s all free!
Better git my froggy ass over there before I go south then!
Would’ve posted a photo of a frog based exhibit but it was impossible to see everything what with the place been overrun on the first weekend…
My favorite sort of place, I love London because of the fabulous museum choices there and speaking of London, for any spillers who live or visit there, there’s a ‘not to be missed’ music deal in todays G, it’s at http://www.guardian.co.uk/extra/2011/aug/02/curtain-call
wish I could be there.
Sounds interesting. That Ron Arad, he’s a geezer.
Looks fabulous, I’m working on young Munday … if not I shall have to take myself.
You may not be aware that my visual art is my grand passion, even more than music. That’s the thing i miss most about not living in NYC anymore is the museums. You must have done a double take at the llama!
The slideshow looks great, looks like you got it to work well.
There’s some really good galleries here as well amylee so if you ever make it over you could have a grand day out! Edinburgh punches way above its weight when it comes to the arts.
Yeah, the slideshow is actually surprisingly easy to do. I really wasn’t expecting to see a llama, but I think the one on my RR avatar is a bit cuter!
They haven’t got rid of the fish, have they?
Hi blimpy – I take it you’re referring to the live fish. If so, they seem to be gone. The only fish I saw were suspended on wires and were of the fibreglass variety, but I didn’t see everything there so I guess they may have moved them….
The gallery is a beautiful room. Thanks for the hanging hippo shot… looks like he’s heading over to give the fertility statue a bit of hospitality.
It looks really beautiful and if I am lucky enough to go to Scotland again I will definitely visit!
Oh dear!
I was Anonymous! But hopefully no longer!
Hi Sakura – I figured that was you! Do you have similar museums in Japan where they put absolutely everything under one roof?
http://www.j-travelnavi.com/sightseeing-spot/tokyo/yanaka-nezu-sendagi-area#Daimyo Clock Museum
We do have Museums with something of everything, but usually they are local regional museums, but really in Tokyo the small museums are specialised and they are really hidden treasures.
On my home island we have a small museum but we do not have a homepage for it but it is about folk history of our island mainly and there is a Wiki reference for it here
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paantu
and there is a small review of it here
http://www.japanican.com/japaninfo/Detail.aspx?BookID=B5002260&category=S
Also companies very often have museums in the head quarters buildings which are free and often have nice cafes, so if you are interested in electronics then the Sony museum is interesting and you can see the first walkmans and things like that, but the is in the Bridgestone Museum which is not actually about tyres but has the maybe the finest collection of French Impressionist painting in Japan.
My favourite small is the Daimyo Clock Museum. This dedicated to old Jpanese clocks which measured the old time scale we used before adopting western time. This time concept is very hard for me to explain but this link explains it I think!!
http://www.jcwa.or.jp/eng/historyindustry/history01.html#h2
The museum is private and not always open so you need to call first, but it is really interesting and the clocks are really beautiful.
http://burari2161.fc2web.com/daimyoudokei.htm
My boyfriend favourite Museum is the Beer Museum in the Sapporo Brew Company building!
I like the idea of having a different interpretation of time. When I was a boy I guess i didn’t really think of time in terms of hours or minutes because a day always seemed incredibly long and there was time to do everything – now I’m not so sure!
My brother did some work with Rolls Royce some years ago on an urban regeneration project. Some of the big traditional industrial companies own large amounts of land in cities which they are now trying to use for other purposes. He was taken to the Rolls Royce museum which he said was fantastic – and guess what: it’s private! I know it costs money to staff and run a museum but I think if it’s good, people will be happy to pay a fair price to go and visit.