National Museum of Scotland

"Royal Museum" redirects here. For other uses, see Royal Museum (disambiguation).

National Museum of Scotland
Scottish History and Archaeology department, opened in 1998 with collections from the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland
National Museum of Scotland is located in Edinburgh city centre
National Museum of Scotland
General information
Architectural styleVictorian Venetian Renaissance and modern
Town or cityEdinburgh
CountryScotland
Coordinates55°56′49″N 3°11′24″W / 55.94694°N 3.19000°W / 55.94694; -3.19000
Construction started1861
Completed1866 and 1998
Inaugurated1866
Renovated2011
Design and construction
Architect(s)Benson & Forsyth
Structural engineerAnthony Hunt Associates
Website
www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-scotland/ Edit this at Wikidata
Natural Sciences department, the room opened in 1866 with natural history collections transferred from the adjacent University of Edinburgh.

The National Museum of Scotland in Edinburgh, Scotland is a museum of Scottish history and culture.

It was formed in 2006 with the merger of the new Museum of Scotland, with collections relating to Scottish antiquities, culture and history, and the adjacent Royal Scottish Museum (opened in 1866 as the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art, renamed in 1904, and for the period between 1985 and the merger named the Royal Museum of Scotland or simply the Royal Museum), with international collections covering science and technology, natural history, and world cultures.[1][2][3][4] The two connected buildings stand beside each other on Chambers Street, by the junction with the George IV Bridge, in central Edinburgh. The museum is part of National Museums Scotland and admission is free.[5]

The two buildings retain distinctive characters: the Museum of Scotland is housed in a modern building opened in 1998, while the former Royal Museum building was begun in 1861 and partially opened in 1866, with a Victorian Venetian Renaissance façade and a grand central hall of cast iron construction that rises the full height of the building, design by Francis Fowke and Robert Matheson. This building underwent a major refurbishment and reopened on 29 July 2011 after a three-year, £47 million project to restore and extend the building led by Gareth Hoskins Architects along with the concurrent redesign of the exhibitions by Ralph Appelbaum Associates.[6]

The National Museum incorporates the collections of the former National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland. As well as the national collections of Scottish archaeological finds and medieval objects, the museum contains artefacts from around the world, encompassing geology, archaeology, natural history, science, technology, art, and world cultures. The sixteen new galleries reopened in 2011 include 8,000 objects, 80% of which were not previously on display.[7] One of the more notable exhibits is the stuffed body of Dolly the sheep, the first successful cloning of a mammal from an adult cell. Other highlights include Ancient Egyptian exhibitions, one of Sir Elton John's extravagant suits, the Jean Muir Collection of costume and a large kinetic sculpture named the Millennium Clock. A Scottish invention that is a perennial favourite with children visiting as part of school trips is the Scottish Maiden, an early beheading machine predating the French guillotine.

In 2019, the museum received 2,210,024 visitors, making it Scotland's most popular visitor attraction that year.[8]

  1. ^ Swinney, Geoffrey (July 2013). "PhD thesis:Towards an Historical Geography of a 'National' Museum: The Industrial Museum of Scotland, the Edinburgh Museum of Science and Art and the Royal Scottish Museum, 1854 - 1939". Edinburgh Research Archive. University of Edinburgh.
  2. ^ Swinney, Geoffrey. N (2014). "Collecting Legacies: National Identity and the World-wide Collections of National Museums Scotland". Review of Scottish Culture. 26: 132–147.
  3. ^ Swinney, Geoffrey N. (2006). "Reconstructed Visions: The Philosophies that Shaped Part of the Scottish National Collections". Museum Management and Curatorship. 21 (2): 128 142. doi:10.1080/09647770600502102. S2CID 220353761.
  4. ^ Allan, Douglas A. (1954). The Royal Scottish Museum: Art & Ethnography, Natural History, Technology, Geology, 1854 to 1954. Edinburgh: Oliver and Boyd.
  5. ^ Swinney, Geoffrey N.; Heppell, David (1997). "Public and Privileged Access: A Historical Survey of Admission Charges and Visitor Figures for Part of the Scottish National Collections". Book of the Old Edinburgh Club. New Series. 4: 69 84.
  6. ^ "National Museum of Scotland to reopen after £47m refit". BBC News. 27 July 2011. Retrieved 20 December 2011.
  7. ^ NMS press release for the reopening
  8. ^ "ALVA - Association of Leading Visitor Attractions". alva.org.uk. Retrieved 23 October 2020.