Museum visiting in Edinburgh and Glasgow – 150 years of change and continuity

ABSTRACT

Despite, or perhaps because of, being only 45 miles apart and of a similar size, Glasgow and Edinburgh are famous for their historical and cultural differences and notorious for their rivalry. This article will explore the history of museum visiting by comparing the current visitor demographics of Glasgow Museums, with those of the National Galleries and the National Museums in Edinburgh, and exploring the extent to which these differences can be traced back to the founding cultures of these institutions. Drawing on historical visitor data and discourse analysis of official museum commentary on visitor behaviour, this article will assess Davies, Paton and Sullivan’s museum version of the Competing Values Framework and Wouter’s theory of informalisation as approaches to interpret how institutional traditions have interacted with wider social developments. It will conclude with reflections on the implications for museum history, and for current policy and practice.

KEYWORDS:

• Glasgow
• Edinburgh
• museums
• founding cultures

Notes on contributor

Mark O’Neill was Director of Policy & Research for Glasgow Life, the charity which delivers arts, museums, libraries and sports services for the City of Glasgow from 2009 to 2016 and Head of Glasgow Museums from 1998-2009. He led the teams which established the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art, founded the Open Museum (award winning outreach service), refurbished Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum and created the Riverside Museum (European Museum of the Year 2013).

Notes

1 A number of the museums under review changed their names over the course of their history. For convenience I will use the acronyms listed here – RSM, NMAS, NGS and GM – for all precursor institutions.

2 It is impossible to distinguish between changes in visit numbers which are due to people visiting more frequently, or by more people visiting. A partial exception to this is visits by tourists, as their visits to the country tend to be very infrequent, and hence they are unlikely to be repeat visitors to the museums.

3 Calculated from data in the SAS proceedings.

4 Calculated from NGS minute books in the Scottish Records Office.

5 I am grateful to David Anderson for providing me with a photocopy of the diary of William Clarke, his great-great-uncle.

6 These would be included in the general numbers, but not in the family visits with children, which are derived from the surveys.

7 This table was compiled from the annual reports of the respective organisations and from Scotinform.Glasgow Museums Visitor Survey 2016, Scotinform National Museum of Scotland Visitor Survey 2016/17 and Kantar TNS National Galleries of Scotland Visitor Survey 2016/2017. I am grateful for their permission to use these.

8 In addition to visit data for RSM, this includes the National War Museum, the National Museum of Flight and the National Museum of Rural Life.

9 Separate data are not available for the NGS partner galleries – Paxton House and Duff House.

10 The Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD) measures across seven domains: current income, employment, health, education, skills and training, housing, geographic access and crime. SIMD 1 comprises the bottom fifth of the population, SIMD 5 the top fifth, according to weighted calculations based on these measures.

11 These are general visits based on adults (over 16) interviewed in the survey (see Note 1). School visit numbers are included in main visit numbers.