National Museum of Scotland - History

History

The history of the museum can be said to begin in 1780 with the foundation of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, which still continues, but whose collection of archaeological and other finds was transferred to the government in 1858 as the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland, based in Queen Street in the New Town, Edinburgh. In 1861 construction of the Royal Museum (originally the Industrial Museum) began with Prince Albert laying the foundation stone. In 1866, the eastern end, including the Grand Gallery, was opened by Prince Afred. In 1888 the building was finished and in 1904 renamed the Royal Scottish Museum (or Royal Museum of Scotland), and again in 1995 as the Royal Museum.

The organizational merger of the National Museum of Antiquities of Scotland and the Royal Scottish Museum took place in 1985, but the two collections kept their separate buildings until 1995 when Queen Street closed, to reopen as the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, and in 1998 the new Museum of Scotland building opened, next door to the Royal Museum, and connected to it. The plan to redevelop the Royal and further integrate the two buildings and collections was launched in 2004, and in 2006 the two museums were formally merged into the National Museum of Scotland. The old Royal Museum building closed for redevelopment in 2008, before reopening in July 2011.

Initially, much of the Royal Museum's collection came from the Museum of Edinburgh University, and there is a bridge connecting the museum to the University's Old College building. The students saw the collection as their own, and curators would often find the exhibits rearranged or even missing. The final straw came in the 1870s, when students who were holding a party found that the museum was also holding a reception for local dignitaries, and had stored refreshments in the bridge. When the museum found the refreshments missing, the bridge was bricked up the next day, and has remained so since.

The Royal Museum displayed prank exhibits on April Fool's Day on at least one occasion. In 1975, a fictitious bird called the Bare-fronted Hoodwink (known for its innate ability to fly away from observers before they could accurately identify it) was put on display. The exhibit included photos of blurry birds flying away. To make the exhibit more convincing, a mount of the bird was sewn together by a taxidermist from various scraps of real birds, including the head of a Carrion Crow, the body of a Plover, and the feet of an unknown waterfowl. The bare front was composed of wax.