Director steers major change of direction for National Museum
Professor Christopher Breward, director of the National Museum of Scotland, is to ‘rethink’ the Scottish galleries, writes Brian Ferguson
The new figurehead of the nation’s busiest visitor attraction has signalled a major change of direction which see it staging fewer “blockbuster” exhibitions, draw on more of its own collections to overhaul how it “tells Scotland’s story” and look into its future.
Professor Christopher Breward, who took over the running of the National Museum of S cotland in the spring, said work would be getting under way in 2021 on a “rethink” of the dedicated S cottish galleries created in a major expansion of the Victorian building in Edinburgh in the 1990s.
He suggested that a move away “19th centur y thinking” about how the lay- out of the museum and curators working in “silos” would be reflected in new displays of S cottish treasures, which could be rolled out from 2022 on.
Professor Breward, pre - viously director of collection and research at the National Galleries of S cotland, said modern- day objects and acquisitions from the fields of science and technolog y would be used to help visitors into the museum to “tr y to understand what the future might look like.”
However he also revealed that the attraction was likely to move away from staging major touring exhibitions in future, admitting that museums around the world were already debating the “real cost” of such shows before the Covid-19 outbreak, which closed down the muse - um for five months in 2020, due to their carbon footprint.
Professor Breward, a former principal of Edinburgh College of Ar t, said there had been a “deliberate choice” to focus on largely S cottish content in his exhibitions programme in 2021, which will focus on the Galloway Hoard, the Vikingage treasures acquired by the museum three years ago following their discover y by a metal detectorist in Dumfries and Galloway, the writer Sir Walter S cott and S cotland’s response to the climate emergency.
In recent years the muse - um has created major exhibitions char ting the histor y of S cottish pop and rock music, B onnie Prince Charlie and the Jacobites, and Mar y Queen of S cots. But it has also hosted major touring exhibitions devoted to dinosaurs, monkeys, robots and computer games.
Professor Breward said: "One of the brilliant things about working in a national museum like ours is that there is great potential within our own collection. There’s plent y of imaginative, creative stuff to be done that I’m sure audiences will enjoy.
“The old model of the blockbuster exhibition wasn’t really a sustainable business model. That debate was already happening before the pandemic. The museums sector will be looking at the carbon footprint and real costs of those exhibitions.
“I think we need to focus on themes and issues that have more local relevance in future. There’s an opportunit y for new thinking at the moment.
"We’ve already taken a deliberate choice to really focus on S cotland in 2021, to focus on our own collections and focus on some of the issues that are of real interest to our audiences.
“For at least the next six months, or maybe a year, we are going to be reliant on a much more local and national audience for at least the next six months. We have an oppor tunit y at the moment to think about what we mean to people in S cotland. The local has to be the focus at present, with a view to rethinking and maybe resetting for the future.”
The museum’s £45 million eight-storey extension, which was aimed at char ting the evolution of S cotland from prehistoric times to the present day, was unveiled in 1998.
A long-term overhaul of the original building, which cost £80 million and took 15 years to complete, was finished in Februar y 2019. Visitor numbers have soared from around 700,000 to more than 2.2 million in that period.
Professor Breward said the future of the S cottish galleries, currently home to around 12,000 objects, would be explored during 2021 as par t of work on a new five -year strateg y.
He added: “With the move
away from the blockbusters, there’s an oppor tunit y to look at the relationship bet ween big exhibitions and permanent displays. I think our focus will move on to how we tell S cotland’s stor y through our permanent collection and galleries, as much as through temporar y exhibitions.
“I think we’ll also see a shift away from big capital projects towards really thinking about the stories we want to tell.
“Our S cottish galleries have stood the test of time for several decades now, but we are now embarking on a rethinking around that collection. The essential underlying stories and the way material is arranged through themes and chro-nology has stayed much the same.
“One of the great things is the breadth of our collection In the past, curators tended to think in siloed ways about science and technology, the natural world, archaeology and history, and decorative arts. There’s great potential for new thinking.
“How we tell the big sto-ries of Scotland in away that connects all those ele - ments together is fascinating to me. That’s not really been done before. We’re still working on the footprint of a 19 th century museum with 19 th century thinking, in many ways.”
“The really interesting thing at the moment is how curators are thinking more and more about the present and the future and looking at things that are making an impact in societ y, par ticularly around the natural sciences, biodiversity and technolog y.
"People should come here to try to understand what the future might look like, as well as understand the past.
“New acquisitions are a great way to generate new ideas and new thinking. The collecting we are doing at the moment is tr ying to anticipate the things that are of interest at this moment in histor y that will continue to have an effect in the future.”