Stirling stuff (Smith Art Gallery and Museum)

Museums and galleries rank among the most visited attractions in Scotland, but what makes them so appealing? In the first of a new series, Roddy Martine visits the Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling to find out

Art galleries and museums can be dull places, but not when you have an inspirational individual in charge. One such individual is Dr Elspeth King who in the past was not only responsible for revitalising the People’s Palace in Glasgow, but virtually created the fascinating Abbot’s House in Dunfermline.

Since 1994, however, she has been at the Smith Art Gallery and Museum in Stirling, where she has brought about the transformation of an already remarkable collection into a visitor-friendly showcase.

Who else, when promoting a spectacular exhibition of landscape paintings by the Victorian artist Joseph Denovan Adam, famous for his depiction of Highland cattle, would have thought of adopting a young Highland bullock called Hamish and installing him on a patch of grass at the gallery entrance? Saved from slaughter due to the BSE crisis by the Friends of the Smith and his young friends, Hamish is currently employed as the Smith’s external relations officer and his CV can be viewed on the Museum’s website.

And then there was the ambitious exhibition based on the life of Sir William Wallace, Scotland’s great renegade freedom fighter, timed to coincide with all the hype which surrounded Mel Gibson’s widely inaccurate, but enormously entertaining Hollywood blockbuster, Braveheart.

The town of Stirling in Central Scotland is sometimes described as ‘the brooch which clasps the Highlands and the Lowlands together.’ However, as visitor traffic headed north following a tour of the old .....

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By Roddy Martine

Section : Scotland Museums

Page number : 38