The Stirling Smith Art Gallery and Museum is a small building formally the Smith Institute founded in 1874 that currently houses one art gallery room, one stage room (like theater stage) a cafe, and a main museum room.
There are a few common elements of a small museum that has too broad a topic or theme and or too big a collection for the space. One is funding, two is collection size compared to storage space and lastly exhibit/gallery space. For Stirling Smith it is partly to do with use of the exhibit space, but the other half is curation of the collections you have. We will just all agree that funding is always an issue (because it is), and pretend for the moment that it isn't for the sake of evaluating the other two issues.
I hope this will give you non-museum folks a brief insight to the issues that all museums face, but especially small museums.
This is all my opinion based off classes I have taken and a background from growing up in a museum. Like most curation and museum organization discussion, I am not the end of the debate.
Let's start with the Art Gallery.
The Space:
The building itself is beautiful, and I can see why a museum would fit nicely as the continued use for it, however, the division of the rooms has not been quite used to it's full potential in my opinion.
The first red flag for me was the fact that it is an Art Gallery and a Museum, which frankly to me exists like that strictly because they have a small collection of art that they feel the need to showcase. It is beautiful art that has a Scottish connection and the room is set up like your traditional gallery space. Empty floor besides a couple benches for the contemplatives and the tired and nicely spaced and aesthetically pleasing hung art. I think the main misuse of space was the size of the room.
This room is the second biggest space and I would estimate about a fourth of the whole building, however, there were seemingly four different art exhibitions in this one massive room. I would have suggested splitting the room in half and creating two galleries that could then further into the themes of the different collections. This would also possibly allow for a rotation to happen which would keep audiences feeling like they could come back. If they have more art they can display, it can also now be added to the rotation. I don't think the rooms would be too small and I think it would feel better organized as a whole.
Additionally, when I hear the words Art Gallery, I think more than one exhibition of art. I don't think I am alone in that, and most patrons would expect to see a further curated and intentional space for the art collections. Something as simple as a partition wall in the center of the room wouldn't have to close off the space, but would make the exhibits more intentional.
The Art Collections:
There is a rather magnificent set of Art pieces by Thomas Stuart Smith, of which I wanted to know more about than the couple descriptive plaques allowed. Obviously this selection should be displayed, but it was just thrown in among other walls of paintings, these two weren't even on the same wall despite obvious connections.
This could be an amazing little gallery in a smaller room with further information on Smith himself, even without other paintings by him you could make a bigger deal about his political and progressive thinking in a time where his art wasn't wanted.
This would then be able to be a rotating exhibit where featured stories could have their moments.
The other art was categorized by subjects of the paintings. A portrait wall and a Scottish Landscape wall and a section of still life. These, could be the other smaller gallery where the broader themes are more welcome, and it is generally a wider appreciation of art in general. This room wouldn't rotate.
These were a couple of the more Scottish themed paintings I took a liking too.
Now, the assumption I have made is that they have more paintings they could display, or enough connections with other institutions to have traveling exhibits. If they do, this would be a more effective use of the space. Mainly I was a little frazzled at the gem of a story buried among the rather mundane organization of the other beautiful art.
The Museum Space:
The Museum section has a similar affliction with the use of space as the Art Gallery, but on a larger scale. This room was probably two fourths of the building.
The trouble with small museums with large collections is that there isn't enough space to respectfully and intentionally display all of it in an easy to digest way. Additionally, they also generally have limited storage requiring them to display more due to lack of space. This creates what I call the montage exhibit.
Much like a movie montage, there are pieces from specific themes or eras that are deemed the most important of the bigger collection that then get displayed in a small portion of the museum one after the other. Like the prom dress montage of an 80's romantic comedy this generally shows highlights of a longer section of time in order to move through it quickly.
It is not effective if there are too many different topics. Which this format often has.
At the Stirling Smith it is a general history of Stirling in all periods. There were Roman elements next to the Wars of Independence section, inches away from each other. I think it generally tried to go in Chronological order but the partitions were so buried under artifacts and text panels, and the themes were so different, that it was hard to know what order to go in. There were random busts and taxidermy in-between seemingly formed groups of artifacts that didn't play much of a roll in the experience other than just taking up a good amount of space.
The Collection:
The biggest collection in the museum space was of British Pewter. There was just case after case of it with little text cards propped up in front of each item. It wasn't the most effective way of displaying it and it ran all along the back wall of the space.
The rest of the stuff felt like a storage space. Like in a Scooby Doo episode where they are wandering around and bumping into stuff and seemingly go from a mummy to a T-Rex in a matter of steps. In other words, it was a little bit of everything.
I am not trying to roast the museum as this is a common issue all across the world, but it is a great example of how to critically analysis the function and effectiveness of such a place.
How would you try to fix this? Well the first thing I would want to do was take out the things that didn't seem to fix into any one section and instead became space fillers. That is if there is enough space to store it as often these are bigger items. Then I would split the room more efficiently. Make the partitions create a pathway through everything rather than a maze of random corners. Make distinct rooms for the patron to land in so they know they are moving to a new topic or area of interest.
After you have rooms of a sensible size and a good directional floor plan you can figure out how many small themes you can fit in total. From there it is up to the curator to pick the important messages and periods within Stirling's history and make little stories about it.
It isn't easy and when you have a lot of stuff a new problem arises, of all the stuff you have, what is worth keeping? Do you have stuff that doesn't even really belong in your collections? How do you get rid of stuff you don't want? How do you deem it not important enough to keep? Can you re-home it in a more appropriate museum or gallery? These are the tough and ethical questions that arise in museum curation.
It can be hard to foresee what is a bad donation or discovered piece when they come in individually, you don't always know if it is important in the moment, and sometimes you want to take something just because you personally think it is fascinating (I don't recommend this method of curation).
Due to these issues as well as funding, I can see why the museum is set up the way it is. I just thought this was a great example of common small museum issues that most visitors do not understand.
Similarly to the art pieces by Smith, there was one stand out thing that caught my attention that seemed buried among the other stuff. This was a dolls house that was rather impressive and had a story with a lot of heart.
Excuse the product of an ever difficult task of taking pictures through a glass case, but even still I think you can see the scale and work that went into it. Besides, it was all made of scraps left over since rationing during the war was in full force. Pretty impressive for just scraps.
I know this post is different than my others so far. It is much more Historian than Abroad Adventures, but I hope this provided some insight into the struggles with displaying, preserving and curating a body of collections. I don't think it is commonly known or thought about, and it really should be. Trust me, I am not just saying that because I am a passionate history student.