Annual Review 2011-12 - National Galleries of Scotland

than before. The underlying ethic of the
original Victorian gallery was a nineteenth-century
notion of good citizenship
and belief in the power of portraits of the
great to inspire. Our twenty-first-century
concept broadens the range of people
presented, finding greatness in ‘ordinary’
lives and offering visitors a vivid and
dynamic portrait of Scotland – its history,
its culture and contemporary society. The
richness of Scottish history and culture is
presented in a way which tells the story of
the people of Scotland through the lens of
the visual arts.
Scotland’s pioneering role in the
development of photography is celebrated
by the establishment of a permanent
photography gallery in the building, the
first such gallery in a public institution in
Scotland. The opening display, Romantic
Camera, highlighted some of the greatest
works in the photography collection. The
gallery, named the Robert Mapplethorpe
Photography Gallery, will show regular,
changing photography displays which will
demonstrate the breadth of the collection,
made possible by the generous support of
the Mapplethorpe Foundation.
Touch Screens
As part of our developing digital strategy, we
created a multimedia touch screen system
for the Portrait Gallery. Faces & Places
uses extensive multimedia material to give
additional context to the great Scots in our
portraits, including archive video and audio,
specially commissioned films and pageturning
features for important texts.
There is also an online component of
Faces & Places on nationalgalleries.org
where Gallery visitors can extend their experience,
and users can access some of the
content and do online-only activities, such
as ‘My Face, My Place’.
Above Cleaning the mural
scheme by William Hole
in the Great Hall. Photos:
Antonia Reeve
Above left Transporting back
into the Gallery and installing
Agostino Masucci’s The
Solemnisation of the Marriage
of James III and Maria
Clementina Sobieska. Photos:
NGS Conservation
Above right Faces & Places touch
screen gallery
Completing the Project
It took an enormous amount of planning
and effort to complete the project
and to create the new displays. In the
months leading up to the grand opening
on 1 December, the finishing touches
were made to the interior of the building,
including cleaning the murals in the Great
Hall and reinstating the artworks.
Over the summer of 2011 the
Conservation Department undertook
an intensive six-week project to clean
the lavish mural scheme by William
Hole which decorates the Great Hall.
These extraordinary paintings, which
include detailed sculptural and applied
elements, are a key feature of the spectacular
Arts and Crafts building. The
project brought together a team of eleven
people, including two Edinburgh-based
wall painting conservators and an international
team of students from training
courses in the USA, Finland, Canada and
UK. Not only are the results breath-taking
after the removal of thick layers of grime,
but the project provided a means by which
the Galleries could contribute to the development
of conservation training around
the world. This project was generously
supported by WREN (Waste Recycling
Environmental Ltd).
Many of the objects were easily transported
back into the Portrait Gallery,
but some of the larger objects were not
so straightforward. The movement from
storage back into the Gallery of two
outsized paintings by the eighteenthcentury
Italian artist Agostino Masucci
presented a logistical conundrum to
the team, with each measuring around
3.5 metres. To simply carry them up the
stairs was not an option. Our conservation
technicians built a customised former
or ‘horse’ around which the works could
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