Stirling Smith Museum and Art Gallery - The Stirling Smith 1959-1990

The Stirling Smith 1959-1990

Many museums in Scotland, like the Smith, were founded by a private individual or an archaeological or scientific society, and were run with private resources for public benefit. Libraries developed in the same way. With encouragement from Andrew Carnegie, public libraries became the mark of a civilised society, and the Public Libraries Act made their funding by the local authority mandatory. Gradually, many local authorities also took on the responsibility of running their local museums, but this remained an option rather than a duty. Various letters from concerned experts were addressed to the Smith Trustees during the difficult years, urging them to hand over the Smith to the burgh council.

During the years of the Great Depression, the money left by Thomas Stuart Smith failed to return much by way of interest. The building began to develop problems, made worse by the Second World War. By the 1960s, the underfunding and lack of development was serious, and the enduring memory that many Stirling citizens have of the building in this period is the sound of rain being caught in numerous metal buckets and tin cans, spread around the floor at strategic points.

In 1970, the Trustees, on the advice of the Keeper of the National Museum of Antiquities, signed over the original Stirling Heads to the Department of Ancient Monuments (now Historic Scotland). It was feared that these important early portraits were in danger because of the condition of the Smith and that they should be returned to their original home, Stirling Castle. (Interestingly, the National Museum Trustees have not elected to return the three Stirling Heads in their collection to Stirling Castle.) Additional proposals sought from other experts recommended the dispersal of the art collection, and the use of the history collections for exhibitions in various historic buildings in the upper town.

At one point, the building was in such poor condition that the only viable option seemed to be demolition. In 1973, the Friends of the Smith, a body of concerned citizens was formed to save the building and its collections. Working in partnership with the local authority, they effected a rescue package.

Elsewhere in Scotland, museums and galleries were the responsibility of the district councils. In Stirling, the situation with the Smith was so serious, that the regional council was persuaded to enter into the partnership, providing half of the public funding package. The Joint Committee of Stirling District Council and Central Regional Council was the Smith’s governing body from 1975 until the disappearance of the Regional Council in 1996, and during those years, it alone of all the Regional Councils in Scotland invested money in a local museum and gallery.

A major programme of refurbishment was undertaken in the mid 1980s, and the collections were moved out to various stores during the contract period. Some of the cost-cutting measures undertaken by the original builders came to light.

In 1984 during renovation of Gallery 2, an initially straight forward contract became suddenly much more expensive and difficult. We were called through to the room by the contractors to look at a problem they had encountered with the dividing wall between galleries 2 and 3. I had to climb up to look at the top of the wall which appeared sound but that was not the problem. One of the builders leaned gently on the top of the wall and we all had the distinct feeling that the scaffolding was swaying dramatically. It was not the scaffold but the wall that had moved about a foot at the top. Since this wall was supposed to be holding up the roof at this point it was rather worrying. It turned out that the Victorian builders had built a wall only two bricks wide but forty feet high. Thankfully the main roof beams were able to support the roof and had in fact been holding the wall in place for one hundred and ten years. The entire wall had to be demolished and a new wall six bricks wide with a five foot foundation, rebuilt in its place.