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"THE 'ROYAL MUSEUM' EDINBURGH
(1854 - 2008)"
'...it is a Museum of the industry of the world in relation to Scotland'
Mr. Geoff Swinney
The former Royal Museum building on Chambers Street, Edinburgh, is about to reopen following a three year redevelopment programme. This £46 million project is but the latest in a series of changes that the building has undergone in its 150 year history. When it was first planned in the early 1860s the Museum was the largest public building in Scotland, a purpose-built, state-of-the-art piece of technology for showing off pre-existing natural history collections and newly created collections of industrial science - the Museum was conceived as the Industrial Museum of Scotland. The Museum aimed 'to show the World to Scotland'. The redevelopment programme now nearing completion has sought to regain that state-of-the-art status whilst respecting the importance of the heritage of the Category A listed building and the collections it houses.
Geoff Swinney, who has been on the staff of the Museum for over 30 years (over a fifth of the institution's existence), traces the origins and development of the government-funded Museum in Edinburgh. He places the current redevelopment within the context of the institution's past and shows how, throughout that history, the Museum has reflected and informed Scotland's sense of its own place in the world.
Mr. Swinney is Principal Curator of Lower Vertebrates,
National Museums of Scotland and is completing a thesis 'Towards a historical geography of a museum' in the Institute of Geography, University of Edinburgh.
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