Strathnaver Museum & Mackay Country Community Trust Moving Times & Museum Tales
Strathnaver Museum
Curating The Collection
The Strathnaver Museum Antiques Roadshow
The Museum On The Road
Having secured excellent and imaginative Curatorial support from Joanne Howdle from Caithness Horizons, The Museum embarked upon a wonderfully quirky Antiques Roadshow Trail last summer. The Museum, sometimes in collaboration with Mackay Country Community Trust, rolled into ‘town’ with displays, intriguing artefacts, one or two of the Artists in Residence and a whole lot of expertise to spare. You can hardly imagine the intriguing and often puzzling items members of the public brought along to get ideas and advice about ‘what on earth is it?!’ or ‘where on earth did it come from?’. The ‘finds’ included a porcelain ginger jar made in China in the later seventeenth or early eighteenth century; wooden water pipe from a distillery; a hook used for catching sand eels and a Roman nail from Inchtuthil.
During the course of these Roadshows ninety-five artefacts or groups of artefacts were presented for discussion, conservation advice and identification. Detailed research regarding the history and provenance of thirty of these artefacts has been undertaken and the resulting information passed back to the owners of these objects: a wonderful journey of discovery for everyone involved. The Roadshow team travelled all across Mackay Country and put on their show in Bettyhill, Borgie Forest, Durness, Skerray, Strathy, Strath Halladale and Tongue.
Managing The Collection
In the course of The Museum’s forty odd years in operation the collections have multiplied in type and scale. The work of caring for and cataloguing this very diverse and ever growing collection became somewhat overwhelming. In the past year funding, time and curatorial support has been dedicated to the hard graft of creating an up to date, digitised catalogue of those collections. At the same time new policies and approaches for the care and repair of delicate or damaged items have been researched and acted upon. We have brought the records up to date and used digital scanning to develop an interactive descriptive catalogue. The MIMSY system has become the backbone of the museum’s collection.
Training has been provided to Museum staff and volunteers regarding how to document and report Treasure Trove material which is deposited at the Museum by members of the public. The review of the Museum’s display and storage areas has led to the production of a Collection Care & Conservation Policy and a Collection Care & Conservation Plan. This sets out an action plan for the Museum to follow over the next few years in order to continue to make improvements in Collection care activities. It also identifies a priority list of objects which require remedial conservation treatment. It has therefore been both drudgery and a great joy for The Museum staff and volunteers to make such significant progress on a critical and very difficult central task for a small and busy museum such as ours.
In addition to all that, they also took the time to arrange guided walks, the events described above and to make significant progress towards the professional provision of a local genealogical service with global reach and ambitions! Past Artist in Residence Ruth Macdougall is currently developing new marketing materials for The Museum. Phewwww!
