National Museum of Scotland

This was incredibly uninspiring, however the collection on display at the Museum did provide another example of how an acquired collection can be used to benefit the public, in that it's place as a collection is to inform. There was a floor called 'Treasured" that displayed a number of artifacts from various cultures. These items acted as a visual aid to a short informative summary of the particular culture it had been acquired from, it gave me an insight into how valuable a collection can be as a gateway to an unenvisionable part of history.



The floor up from this was called 'Communicate!' various collections of objects, acting as a chronologically curated visual history. For example, a large display of telephones showing the changes and adaptations the phone undertook over the years. Again, non of this was particularly enthralling but a majority of displays were interactive, directly engaging and questioning the audiences relationship with the collection.

Book Forms

It's way to early for me to say what form I'd like my book to come in, I'm terrible at the practical side of this so I guess I should work it out as quick as possible so there's room for mistakes. I put together a plain soft back today...

I'm not particularly interested in creating any sort of flamboyant, ridiculously shaped book, feel like that would lack any kind of relevance to the project and I'd rather spend more time on the content. These appealed to me a lot, simple in terms of the format of the book, the strength in the content.

I'd rather put more thought into the content, but definitely swaying towards a soft back book, I kind of appreciate the delicacy of them.

Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art - 50 Years exhibition

It's the 50th anniversary of the National Gallery of Modern Art, so in celebration the galleries' entire collection is currently on display. Being that I've been considering ways of visually referencing collections in a manner that audiences can engage with that are non-ocular, viewing this exhibition kind of gave me an insight into how a collection works thats primary purpose is to be engaged with by an audience. The curation of such a wide collection of work, even in something as ambiguous as modern art spanning over a 50 year period, was undertaken logically and categorically. Works were divided into groups, some as simple as 'Heads' or 'Things', others included 'Still Life' or 'The Artist as a Subject'. This kind of provided a loose narrative to the exhibition, if it were somewhat chronological, in terms of when the objects were either made or acquired by the gallery, I feel it would have felt a lot more broken in this sense. Some of the groupings seemed to clash a little, particularly the more simply named, I felt like they were kind of placed together with such a vague connection, the content of the works so wide it felt like the shouldn't be in a room together.

A trend I noticed, which has encouraged my choice of media for the exhibition, was that pieces utilizing light were given there own space, if not it was much easier to be drawn towards those particular pieces.

Light seemed in general to have a great deal of influence in the curatorship of this exhibit, some rooms allowed natural light in, particularly the monotone and more greyscale works. Other rooms were in complete darkness apart from the works' themselves, the centre piece - commissioned for this exhibition - was made up almost entirely of abstracted lamposts. What's bad about this is if I want to use light as part of my piece in the exhibition, I have to figure out what light I don't want as part of piece, I don't know if this will require building some sort of booth or just choosing a space - if there are any available - where the use of light can be used to a worthwhile extent.

Lauriston Castle, Cramond, Edinburgh

Lauriston Castle was left to the Edinburgh City Council, a lot of buildings like this still exist but are now used as hotels, offices or flats. The complete interior and collection belonging to it's most recent owners - the Reid's - are still intact, providing a rich historical reference point. The novelty of this collection to me was that, rather than having clear categories or narrative (a visitor would find it very difficult - without any knowledge of Edwardian history or antiques - to intuitively understand what the collection was about or for), the visitor is provided with a tour guide and expert on all the particulars of the castle. This sort of engagement with the collection allowed the to be generally untouched by signs, reference points, categories and instead a narrative is provided by a guided tour, and any questions I felt I needed to ask could be asked directly.

William Robert Reid, the last owner, was clearly an avid book collector and a mildly obsessive collector of Italian furniture. When asked, the tour guide (Mike), attributed this to Mr. Reid being brought up in the Victorian era wherein a gentleman of the time would likely collect things as a symbol of ownership. The owners before Mr. Reid built up an aristocratic collection, ie. consisting of items handed down through their family, as Mr. Reid acquired most of the collection himself, I felt it far more insightful in terms of that persons interests and passions.

These photos kind of provide a visual guide to the castle and the collection within...

The part that interested me the most was Mr. Reid's book collection, these shots were taken by me...

A great deal of the more valuable books were given to the National Library of Scotland, so the collection as it stands in the castle is not as say, complete, as it was before Mr. Reid died, but this struck me as perhaps another purpose of a collection, a useful service for others who otherwise would not be able to afford a collection themselves. (I've explored this part of the collection a little more here) As the castle itself is a historical reference point, everything that the collection contains, and the collection itself, allows the visitor to understand not only the life of Mr. Reid himself, but the culture of his particular class at the time.