All go behind the scenes at Elgin Museum as volunteers get ready to welcome back visitors
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IT'S BEEN all go behind the quiet facade of Elgin Museum as volunteers prepare to welcome back visitors this weekend – for the first time in over a year and a half.
A raft of Covid-safe modifications have been made, and a power of work undertaken to install some brand new exhibitions, to allow Scotland's oldest independent museum to reopen on Saturday, August 7.
Visitors last walked through its doors in October 2019 before it closed for the season. The pandemic then halted its 2020 opening.
Around 12 members of its 50-strong volunteer force have been involved in the reopening process. Initially the museum will open on a weekends-only basis with an online booking system in place.
Claire Herbert, volunteer and vice-chair of the Moray Society which runs the museum, said: "We want to make sure both our visitors and our volunteers are safe. We've done everything we can to make sure we're meeting all the requirements to make the space safe and to ensure people can still enjoy it.
"If we could have opened sooner we would have, but it's been quite a challenge to get everything in place.
"However, during lockdown we've worked to improve our online content, with videos and social media updates. We're really pleased with how popular our YouTube channel has become and we reached some new audiences last year.
"We've been able to switch up what we're doing and let people who can't come in, even outside of Covid, to experience the museum."
A new one-way system has been put in place for visitors to explore its new exhibitions, including "At the Water's Edge", its Year of Coasts & Waters 2020/21 geology exhibition which features the bones of Moray's own 375 million-year-old tetrapod Elginerpeton. This was originally planned to open in March last year.
The public will also finally be able to see an exhibition by local music history enthusiast David Dills about 1960s Elgin music promoter and the man credited with bringing The Beatles north, Albert Bonici, and his fondly remembered ballroom across the road from the museum, The Two Red Shoes.
Claire added: "We have an accompanying exhibition to 'At The Water's Edge' about John Martin, who found the Elginerpeton site near Elgin, and was our first curator here. We have another about the Elgin Marbles with replicas of the Elgin Marbles.
"We have a display on South American archaeology from the James Cooper Clark collection. He came from Lhanbryde and was a very important figure in his field in the 19th century. And we have a brand new art exhibition on Elgin Cathedral with artworks from our own collection."
The volunteers are particularly excited about "At the Water's Edge", which brings together – for the first time – the bones of the 1.5m-long predator Elginerpeton, discovered at Scaat Craig, near Longmorn. These are some of the earliest known tetrapod fossils in the world.
Geologist and volunteer Dr Alison Wright said: "Elginerpeton was no insignificant little newt. It's a big apex predator.
"It's very exciting to have all the bones together for the first time in 375 million years!
"We realised that we were in a perfect position for Coasts and Waters 2020/21 because we have this very early tetrapod. These evolved in coasts and waters.
"Although Elginerpeton was found in Longmorn, we don't actually have any of the fossils ourselves. The site was discovered in the late 1820s, and all these interested people visited the site and collected stuff but they thought these bones and scales were from fish. So everything got dispersed and some material will have been lost. Others ended up in museums and private collections.
"It wasn't until the 1990s that a tetrapod expert was reviewing some of these fish bones, who had been studying tetrapods in Greenland, and he said, 'Wait a minute – these aren't fish. This is important'.
"Suddenly these rather uninspiring, dusty collections that had been lying in drawers became really interesting.
"We thought that for Coasts and Waters 2020/21 it would be really nice to bring these fossils together because they've never been seen in that context in Elgin."
Elgin Museum has borrowed the fossils from National Museums Scotland, Oxford University Museum of Natural History and the British Geological Survey.
Alison added: "Because we were borrowing material from National Museums Scotland that meant we were eligible to apply to the Western Loan Programme for funding. They loved the concept and we got just over £23,000."
The funding has allowed the museum to purchase new state-of-the-art display cases and upgrade its environmental monitoring system.
Alison added: "The grant funding has been hugely useful not just for the exhibition but for our long-term sustainability.
"Hopefully visitors will be excited to see something new and something that is so local that has never been on display before."
Other changes made ahead of reopening include doubling the number of volunteers on duty when open, relocating its shop and exit to the side hall to make space, and creating QR codes for some displays to access information rather than having pull-out books.
The volunteers now hope to turn their focus to raising around £1.5 million to upgrade, enhance and carry out necessary work to the landmark High Street building. The roof on the rear gallery leaks despite more than 150 repairs.
Claire said: "What we're hoping is that by improving these spaces we can make ourselves more financially viable and sustainable and have some income so that we're not quite so heavily reliant on grants. But it's a huge piece of work which is running constantly in the background."
Entrance to Elgin Museum is free and visitors should pre-book slots via its new online booking system on its website. Opening times are 11am-3pm, Saturdays and Sundays.
