Scotland's Treasures Full BBC Documentary 2016

Oh inside this building our treasures from every the world some are very small some are very large some are very old some are very new some are valuable others are priceless together they form one of the greatest collections in Europe there is an excitement about the prison teaism of an object actually having an opportunity to see it and be in its presence that is actually unique but the National Museum of Scotland is more than just a place to come and see the world for 150 years has been a place of important scientific research of complex historical detective work and painstaking conservation to understand Scotland one has to understand the past and this building is where the past is preserved now for the first time we will go behind the scenes of one of Britain's busiest museums from its darkest stores to its newest galleries we will see how objects are acquired cared for and displayed and we will get a unique look at the museum's greatest treasures account lead by those who work with them and are inspired by them the museum for me represents adventure excitement amazing miraculous fantastic stuff dozens of galleries over 12 million objects this is the inside story of the treasures of the museum that brings the world to Scotland and Scotland to the world the National Museum of Scotland is the most visited Museum in the UK outside London and one of the most diverse while this museum is unique no other national museum anywhere else can you see such a huge range of material all in one place everything from the natural world to discoveries in science and technology art in design and material from cultures across the world all under one roof but after a century and a half at the heart of Scotland's cultural life things were looking frayed the old building hadn't really been comprehensively redeveloped for many many decades probably really since it was first built nor did we actually tell some of the stories behind the collections in the way the public want to hear them the result is an 80 million pound redevelopment ten new galleries with more to come all full of objects hidden away for decades we had items that were in store for a century never seen by the public so we got many items back on display and really what we wanted to do was to reimagine a museum for today reimagining the museum means taking a closer look at every treasure and no treasure is too old or too beloved to have its own story reexamined [Music] the Lewis chessmen were hidden in the west coast of Lewis and the 12th century but these figures are more than just pieces from an ancient board game they are relics of an empire which stretched from Norway to Greenland and from Ireland to the Western Isles writer and broadcaster Maria gray used to work in the museum my entire heart and soul is stitched into this place I adore every single sale of its being recent work by murals former colleague David Caldwell is challenging what we think we know about the chessmen David this is so exciting just I obviously have to declare an interest and admit that you and I handled these years ago remember I do any form in medieval Scotland exhibition it wasn't back in 1982 just a few days ago but honestly my heart a very young we're very young we're very beautiful and my heart is absolutely missing a bit seeing them again this close this treasure consists of 93 gaming pieces mostly chess pieces in their day there would have been important symbol of wealth and taste when you go back to saga accounts in the Scandinavian world it's clear that playing games is one of the one of the attributes of greatness you know you killed lots of people you went and you raped and pillaged you you could ski you could drink other people under the table but another great attribute was even good at playing games but historians have long treated the chessmen connection with Lewis as accidental assuming a passing merchant had left them there by mistake how come something so sophisticated which I mean someone that we've previously thought looking so bleak Lewis was somewhere I'm horribly report and not the sort of place you expected to find treasures so the conclusion that was immediately jumped to was that it didn't belong but it must be some mistake David disagrees he claims Lewis was a much more important place than historians have traditionally believed Lewis was an important part of a separate scandinavian kingdom the kingdom of the Isles and one of the main things about the kingdom of Isles was it it produced warriors in a way that other societies produced sheep and cows so you're dealing with a warrior aristocracy which had money with Kings who order legions to the Kings in Norway and bishops who Ord allegiance to the Archbishop's are based in intron time David believes the chessmen may have belonged to one of these wealthy warriors it was a very important man in the Western world at that time called Angus who lived in the island and Lewis and Angus is recorded as basically being a Viking he he was one of the leaders of the big Scandinavian invasion fleet and 1263 and as a praise point term which describes how he inherited his ivory chess pieces from his father Donald oh now when you've gone when you got evidence LaPlante why would you in want to invent some sort of story about a merchant abandoning them by mysterious I'm not going back to collect them is so exciting it's so exciting to visit it makes us revalue that entire landscape but that particular serve historical landscape and and and think gain about about our culture chess was a game played by important people initially in India and then the Middle East the changing design of the pieces made of the changing societies in which the game was played and this is what makes the Lewis chessmen particularly interesting what we're seeing here we're seeing Kings we're seeing Queens basically for the first time and bishops because in previous versions of the game you had vizier you had elephant church areas and in many ways that reflects the nature of a Scandinavian society but it's their faces which seem to suggest everyday emotions from boredom to worry to fear that makes the chessmen so appealing to modernize its why should all the Queen's are settled in them and you know this sort of all right I think there is a very good explanation for it because these are not young sexy Queens these are think more like Queen Mother's these are elder statesmen and queens like that we're very important in scandinavian society so it reflects the society of the period the most fearsome and famous piece is the berserker it's the berserkers that really have captured a lot of public imagination because is know slightly frightening absolutely unique ya know there was a there was a cult in the scandinavian world of guys who got a so psyched up before they were into battle that there were on magic mushrooms or something like that and it was so psyched up that they hiked had to bite their shields to hold themselves back it's been over eight hundred years since the chessmen arrived on lewis but only now are we starting to really question their meaning and how they fit into scottish in european history I mean these are enigmas tiny beautifully carved with learning noise and it might take generations before we find out a truth of their origin and their maker it's thrilling we were able to ask questions awesome a few years ago we've come up with suggestions our suggestions may not last forever but at least the hope started a process where other people come along and ask more questions and asking questions about the objects on display is what museum staff do every day the Hilton of cobblestone is a ninth century Pictish monument it may be one of the finest early Christian artworks in Scotland the key is this figure leading a hunt is it a princess or is this Jesus bringing a new religion to the people the accepted meaning of each ancient treasure can change from generation to generation and the true meaning of some may never be known like the Bala who leash figure the shear goddess protecting routes to the sea or a symbol of fertility we do know this figure is two and a half thousand years old making it one of the earliest depictions of human life in Scotland but many objects in the collection are much older than Scotland and some paws big questions about life on Earth itself one of the reasons why we face are so interest is that they can tell us a lot about our own planet that we can't see ourselves the meteorites that we generally see on earth are all derived from the asteroid belt which exists between Mars and Jupiter they do eventually collide with other asteroids and that causes them to to fly off out of the belt and if I enter the to the main part of the solar system this meteorite traveled nearly 200 million kilometers to reach here now this meteorite fell in December of 1917 and was spread across an area roughly in the vicinity of Blair Gary and Cooper Angus the piece we have here has become famous for being the one that fell through the roof of a house the Strathmore meteorite bears the scars from its journey through space on the sufficiency it's actually relatively smooth and black but whereas on this surface it's actually a little bit rougher what happens is as a meteorite comes in and heats up weak spots on the surface will be flicked off if you like by the heat and these will form these little dimples are some days are called thumb prints because of their age meteorites represent a snapshot of the early solar system before planets like our own were formed by examining meteorites we can actually tell a lot about not just the beat rates themselves but a bit about earth tube so they are very much more like primitive material that the early solar system would have formed from but was unable to develop into a full-scale planet like the earth so in a sense we were dealing with really pristine original solar system material the museum also holds a younger meteorite a mere 1.3 billion years old this meteorite is one of the first confirmed visitors to earth from Mars this particular mission I fell in 1911 it was reputed to have hit a dog in FL and Mac colleges in the Nile Delta and it all was supposed according to local Pio to be instantly vaporized the destructive potential of meteorites is well known but some scientists believe meteorites may have been responsible for bringing the building blocks of life itself to earth billions of years ago there's certainly a classification visually called carbonaceous chondrites and as the name suggests it contains quite high content of organic material carbon-based material the life on Earth may have been sparked by this incoming mass of organic material from space providing the building blocks for life not just the earth but for life how life on earth began is one big question how life flourished here is another the Natural Sciences Department is one of the most research-intensive parts of the museum it's their job to ask and answer these big questions these collections they are the world's natural heritage this is it here if you want to start to find out things about the past life about environmental change over periods of time you have to look at these collections the animals known as lizzie and ribble were born and died millions of years apart they represent one of the greatest mysteries in evolution 360 million years ago vertebrates animals with backbones did not exist on land 50 million years later they did the question is what happened between 360 million years ago and 345 and for a long time paleontologists are well somewhere in the world there has to be something that's going to tell us a story Stan wood was a self-taught paleontologist who thought the rocks that formed Scotland might hold the secret Stan had already found Lizzie at East Kruchten in 2008 he headed out to turn site in the Border's van Wood had that special eye for fossils he came across this site just south of Chern side it's actually in the river he went in there feeling around for the fossils and the rocks underneath he took stuff out and then he started to find these bones he started to see limb bones and he thought these are these four-legged animals living at this time three hunters the 45 million years ago here they were in the borders one of the fossils Stan found was Ribble it's called ribbo because of these fantastic ribs big stout ribs are too curved so what that tells us is here is an animal with quite a robust thorax to protect good well-developed lungs and that is one of the prerequisites for living on land being able to breathe oxygen from the air and from what we can see they only have five digits five toes five fingers so here is the sort of basic body plan for all those animals with backbones that live on land today that actually are out on the land surface so it was that transitional type of fossil Stan wood died in 2012 but the work at on site continues led by staff from the museum and including scientists from all over the world so National Museum Scotland is as part of this bigger community and it is vitally important I think for our understanding of the world around us at the Museum a lot of work goes into understanding the world around us and much of that work takes place here at the National collection center in Grantham this is where over 99 percent of the museum's 12 million objects are stored studied conserved and repaired Granton is the beating heart of the museum's vast and largely unseen collection you like this woodlouse it has been perfectly preserved in amber which allows scientists to study it in intimate you yes of just classified as a new species Granton holds dozens of important specimens like this known as types when scientists are describing new species they must refer back to the type specimen making access to these critical to international research type material is the property of science normally a museum that old state material has to publish as tape holdings and make them available to any scientist who wants access to some of these remarkable bird specimens are hundreds of years old but all are made available to researchers this one here is a capper Kayle because of the age off from collected in the 1820s they all a bit more fragile than the skins in the main collection so they're generally kept separate but if anyone specifically needed access to them they would get access they should last more or less indefinitely I mean we have material from the late 1700s which is a perfect condition alongside the insects and birds are bigger mammals well Moby is an adult male sperm whale and we were very keen to collect his skeleton because we didn't have a complete sperm whale skeleton in the collection in 1997 Mobe became stranded in the Firth of Forth when efforts to rescue him failed museum staff were called in to salvage his remains it was a huge task and it took us about six days with six different people to actually cut away the flesh and then we brought the bones back to this site and then we have these large stainless steel tanks which we use basically as I mean it was like large washing machines we can put the bones in there and in the past we've used biological washing powder but today we use other techniques in death Mobe has become not just a popular object on display but an important scientific resource when a whale or dolphin strands first of all lots of samples are taken for looking at things like the diet by looking at what's in the stomach and when we have the bones we can also look at various diseases like arthritis or abscesses which may be there the museum holds half a million vertebrates at Granton from the smallest of fish to dolphins porpoises and whales it's one of the biggest marine mammal collections in the world so large that even today museum staff are still uncovering its secrets my favorite cetaceans specimen is actually quite an old one it was a beluga whale skull which I found in a box and didn't appear to have any information and when I looked into it I actually tracked it down to it being a very old beluga specimen which had been swimming up and down the Firth of Forth back in 1815 and it was annoying all the salmon fishermen and so they'd shot it and this specimen had been thought to be completely lost but in fact it was on our shelves all the time so it was great to be able to rediscover that and it's not just marine mammals under the microscope at Granton the searchers are studying everything from great apes to roadkill well we collect a lot of specimens both from wild populations natural casualties and also from zoos so it's a huge variety of species certainly primates it will be carnivores it would be antelopes deer everything you can imagine just last week we had a black leopard arrived and not had a chance to have a look at it yet we are collaborating with the University of Vienna to look at the structure and function of the the larynx of the Voicebox in a wide range of mammals and the leopard is the last one that we need to have a look at so we will keep the rib cage and that on the head of the thing intact after we skinned it so it can be CT scanned and MRI scan so we can look at this Anatomy in detail this kind of research will not stay in Edinburgh or even the UK it will travel the world connecting the museum to academic and scientific hubs across the globe people think of places like this as being a store but this isn't a store this is an environmental archive it's a library of life if we didn't have these collections to draw upon we would just be a sort of hollow shell would just be a basically a visitor center and of course we're much more than that it might not be a visitor center but it's still a beautiful place to visit when this museum first opened is regarded as an architectural marvel and I think when visitors come in today in the walk into this amazing light filled space with the soaring glass and timber roof and the cast iron pillars and there's no other museum quite like it it's a place people come to meet friends this place some people just sit quietly in I think marvel at the architecture the Grand Gallery leads off to smaller galleries where the bulk of the collection is displayed all of these thousands of objects have been analyzed and examined in minut detail but some still hold secrets one of the most mysterious is this wooden statue of the Madonna and Child its creator is unknown what it used to look like is also unknown ultraviolet scanning shows multiple attempts to repaint the statue hiding its original colors conservators have removed the most recent paint the statue is now a little less colorful but perhaps truer to its original state this historical detective work happens throughout the museum every day because even beautiful objects are not always what they seem we need to drop our modern relative value judgments between silver and gold in some places in anglo-saxon England gold is used to show how important you are but in Scotland silver is occupying that wrong Alice Blackwell is cataloging three hordes of silver used in different parts of Scotland in the first millennium they include exquisite cups plates and other tableware they were all brought to Scotland by the same people silver arrives in Scotland through contact with Rome we don't really have any evidence for the use of silver before that and the Romans really created a desire for silver it pretty rapidly became the main way in which you show how important you are the largest hoard was found at trap rain law and Iron Age hill fort on the Empire's northern frontier a lot of the objects in the hoard are really large impressive pieces of silver tableware the sorts of things that were used to show how important you were at symbolic big feasting and they're also given as gifts to high-ranking officials much of this beautiful silver has been violently hacked into small pieces but it wasn't the people at trap rain law who destroyed it so in the past the silver at rain law might have been seen as looped perhaps and the barbarians to the north looting late Roman silver and cutting it up into pieces these days we tend to see it more as part of a strategic relationship between the Barbarian north and the late Roman Empire the Empire is buying off people it's learned that that's an effective way of helping guard its frontiers the Romans hacked up their own silver and turned it into currency to bribe and barter with their northern neighbors it's part of a way of managing and silver resources so hacking becomes increasingly important as the Roman Empire moves towards its end but this silver had a life beyond currency at sites across Scotland Alice and her colleagues are seeing Roman silver being recycled into the first recognizably Scottish silver objects this is Pictish silver chain so unique to Scotland this sort of object this example is made from solid silver and weighs almost three kilograms so it shows both the amount of silver that was available sometime between the fifth to seventh centuries ad but it also shows em the importance attached to silver this is an object that shouts of the person's status and power these silver hoards are more than just beautiful metal they tell the story of the end of an empire and the growth of something resembling Scotland so silver is so important because it's the most significant material used in Scotland so therefore it underpins the emergence of increasingly small elite groups that change the social structure from an Iron Age structure through to the the first kingdoms of early medieval Scotland in a way silver underpins the creation of the forerunner of Scotland [Music] to understand Scotland one has to understand the past and this building is where the past is preserved author Alexander McCall Smith has many loves among them Scotland and music he has come to the museum to see one of the most intriguing objects from Scotland's past the Queen Mary harp this harp or Clare sack is one of the rarest musical instruments in the world and today only modern replicas like this one can be played [Music] Karen Loomis has spent years unlocking its secrets a visitor looking at this for the first time might think yes very beautiful but where are the strings because of the age of this instrument it's no longer safe to put strings on it and bring them up to tension to play the instrument at the wood is so old that it would it would destroy these historical classics were strung with metal strings so it was a very different sound yes from what people think of harps today this had a very different sound and because the strings are metal this instrument has a lot of resonance and it has a very long resonance so once you pluck a string it will continue to send it's a beautiful sound but it goes on and on and on the one could imagine the the hairy line the theme being played on this oh yes I love it I love this yes love it and thought of that harps like this would once have played a central role in Gallic culture it was the job of the harper to not only entertain in the great houses but also to accompany praise poetry for is aboard yes and that praise poetry often had the the purpose of establishing the jeanna genealogies of the lord and his status in the society but there is a peculiar mystery surrounding this particular harp an old story tells how it was given by Mary Queen of Scots as a gift to a loyal follower actual evidence for this is scant but by using modern CT scanning technology Karen has found a tantalizing royal connection one of the things that that showed was where all the nails were in the wood and I pointed out this little circle of nails here that you can definitely see there was something there that circle is just the right size to hold a gold 1/2 Royale coin from the reign of Mary Queen of Scots in 1745 the harp was owned by a prominent Jacobite family supporters of the Stuart dynasty during the Jacobite rising it fell into the hands of unknown soldiers it seems the coin portrait of the Queen did not survive the rising if you look at the harp you can see where there was something here you can see the little Nick's and you can imagine a soldier taking out his Dirk and prying on a gold coin and great historical events leave their trace that's the wonderful thing about these old objects is that the they provide all sorts of opportunities for detective work we cannot say whether this harp once belonged to Mary Queen of Scots but it does recall a turbulent time in British history when dynasties fail and Scotland's ancient Gallic culture began its retreat in one sense there it is it's it's a harp you understand what it does it looks like a harp but look more closely at it as I've been privileged to do this evening and you see so much more you see a whole lot of Scottish history represented in that object while detective work goes on in the background major exhibitions are a popular way of attracting new visitors these can involve hundreds of the museum's own objects many of which have been in storage for years as well as many borrowed from other collections around the world coming up next is a new show on an old story such exhibitions as Bonnie Prince Charlie Jacoby's are planned up to about two to three years in advance the exhibition will have something that each in of 250 plus objects so it's a big exhibition in fact will be the first major exhibition on the Jacobites for over 70 years some objects will need to be repaired before they go on display including this fragile frock coat which mean ones have been worn by Bonnie Prince Charlie himself I'm just gonna color matching some of the colors in the tartan so what we'll do is dye up some real fabric color match pop it behind like I'm doing here it'll be a bit neater and then I will also do the same with thread and that he'll make the damage look a bit a lot better but also support it so that it doesn't become damaged further this is a painstaking process it involves delicate handiwork as well as the latest technology so what I'm doing is removing the silver tarnish on this spoon by applying this pen which converts the silver tarnish back to silver so it's a the closest we get to alchemy here so I've been working on this exhibition for the past month so we can work out what we need to do to them for them to look their best for the exhibition but also to be sure that they're going to be safe on display this spoon is just a small part of the princes travelling canteen his alfresco picnic set which included everything a monarch an x-file would need for luncheon on the battlefield forks knives a quake and a nutmeg grater the canteen is dripping with iconography and it's a very strong statement the cartouche is a little badge in the middle of the the canteen has the Prince of Wales feathers also Rowan delayed has chased the order of the Thistle we can date that to 1740 1741 so clearly made in Scotland found its way out to Rome this canteen was abandoned by Charles after his defeat at Culloden in 1746 in the collection our other objects lost that day the Taj is part of the accoutrement of a Highland warrior it's the round shield it's M balls of wood I mean these wonderful highly decorated so hormones are of course a very striking but doozers head or God cornea on on the very centre the princess back sword was also abandoned on the battlefield alongside the Taj and canteen disappoint reminder of his defeat the where we must remember I would say gifts fit for apprentice these were objects that were made in Scotland I never sent a to the exiled Jacobite court and room assembles an expressions of loyalty from supporters bike in Scotland and that's what makes them very special indeed Bonnie Prince Charlie remains an iconic figure David knows whatever objects end up on display public interest in the story he tells will be intense your string on the stuff that of people's souls in a way you know and it's still held very very dear today not just in Scotland I mean this is a story that resonates feeling that this college diaspora as well and North America Australia New Zealand and so it's very much a shared a shared story and one that we have to do was do a census sensitively but not shy away from controversy if need be if the truth sometimes jars were for people whose romantic notion as I'm afraid we have to tell the truth before the Jacobites comes an exhibition on ancient Egypt the prelude to the opening of a new permanent gallery our collection has over six thousand Egyptian objects in it and we have eleven individuals mummified or skeletal who are in the collection as well as dozens of coffins this collection includes the work of the pioneering but little-known Scottish archaeologist Alexander Henry rind rind first went to Egypt on behalf of the Museum of Antiquities and he immediately fell in love with the ancient civilization he saw all around him Alexander Henry rind was the first experienced archaeologist to work in Egypt at a time when work going on and in Egypt was little more than looting he was actually accurately recording and planning the objects and where he was finding them in 1857 Ryan headed to the ancient city of Thebes it was hoping that he could find an intact tune group there was already lots of funerary objects in museums around Europe but the understanding of how those objects were used in the tomb where they were found how they related to each other how they changed over time it wasn't really understood Ryan made one of the most significant finds in early Egyptology an intact tomb used and reused by different families over hundreds of years the tomb is enormous it's over a hundred feet cut into the the rock face with multiple chambers and different rooms were used for different members of the family the tomb was last used around 10 BC among the objects recovered was this beautiful papyrus this is a funerary Pyrus that was created for a woman named Tana Wat it describes how Canada died just very shortly after her husband and how important it was that she'd been able to to give the family a son and a daughter it's a really intensely personal document which is quite different to some of the earlier more standardized funerary papyri next to Tana Wat was a younger woman a scan of her mummified remains has revealed details about her life and death she was around 25 to 30 years old she was about 1.5 meters in height and one of the most exciting things that we discovered was that she has a papyrus scroll on her side and hopefully in the near future progress and scanning developments will allow us to actually read that scroll and find out exactly who she was rhyme died when he was just 29 years old he would never be as famous as later egyptologists like Howard Carter who discovered the tomb of Tutankhamen but one of Ryan's greatest discoveries does rival Carter's this is a decorative box of King Amenhotep the second once used to store perfumes cosmetics or other valuable objects it's made of all these incredible precious materials ivory ebony cedar wood with gilding all these different products that come from different parts of the Egyptian Empire it's also decorated with the god bath protective household deity who has a sort of grotesque appearance to be able to frighten off any potential evil forces in terms of the craftsmanship it's comparable really to the the boxes from the tomb of Tutankhamun all the treasures and the museum are valuable but there are many ways to measure this some are valuable because of connections to great historical figures like this bowl known as a maser the line at the center almost certainly represents Robert the Bruce who may even have drunk from it himself also unique is the sparkling traveling service a wedding gift from Napoleon to his favorite sister Pauline over 100 intricately crafted items from a toothbrush to a teapot allowed Pauline to travel Europe in complete comfort Pauline gave the service to her friend the Duke of Hamilton Scotland's premier Pierre an owner of a vast artistic collection which also included this a sardonyx bull carved in Constantinople in the 10th century which said you could join to a solid gold chalice holder originally commissioned by philip ii of spain this fabulous chalice was used in the baptism of the Duke's children but it was sold by the family in the late 19th century as their debts mounted one of the most valuable treasures in the collection is not made of silver or gold it's made of paper and it consists entirely of pictures of dead birds there is a rarity oh yeah the sisal early 13 say it's that our other in private hounds so they don't come up for sale very often these are some plates from a remarkable book Birds of America consisting of 435 individual images it remains one of the most stunning records of the natural world ever created and one of the most valuable a full set sold for 7.3 million pounds in 2010 the Creator was French - nature enthusiasts and amateur artists John James Audubon his idea was to have a painting of every bird and a North America he went into the the woods and he's like he was going with his portfolio to hold the drawings all as our equipment his guns and whatever else he needed by trekking across the frontier Audubon hoped to capture birds as he lived in the wild what he was saying as he had to observe her nature and then try to represent that so it was very much rather than just a profile of a bird it was very much how it was interacting with other birds or feeding or being attacked trying to capture what he what he saw in nature in order to achieve this Audubon skewed his birds into position on a mounting board and then brought out some very large pieces of paper what Audibel wanted to do was capture the birds life size and he realized that for for the larger birds of prey and particularly the Eagles and suchlike he needed the largest paper that was available what became known as double elephant folio I just under a meter by 3/4 of a meter the overwhelming size of the images was only one of the many criticisms Audubon faced the people who would buy something on that expense wouldn't want something as large as that because it almost was a piece of furniture rather than an addition to the library there was also a lot of criticism about his amici that the poses that he put some of the birds and - said to be unnatural despite the criticism the book was an artistic triumph but its value lies not just in its beauty it is a scientific record of a world which is no longer with us he was scientifically important because he discovered 25 new species and 12 subspecies and in that time one of the plates that we have is the Carolina parakeet he was a first bird illustrator too to see that but by 1914 I had completely gone Audubon had strong links to the University of Edinburgh his natural history collection was absorbed by the museum connections like these help explain why the collections today are so diverse really was established as a Museum of the whole world but part of the founding collections came from the University of Edinburgh that brought us specimens from many many countries across the world but even right the very beginning we are collecting the latest scientific and technological innovations we are quite - material from seven continents connections to famous Scots who traveled these seven continents has also bolstered the collection David Livingstone sent this loom to George Wilson the first director of the museum and an old school friend it was used by the man ganja people who lived in modern-day Malawi Livingstone recognised the economic importance of cotton to the people of southern Africa James young Simpson the pioneer of anesthesia donated this immense relief to the Society of Antiquaries a forerunner of the museum in 1865 it shows king ash pure Nashville now the second Brewer of Assyria around 900 BC this relief would once have greeted visitors to his palace at Nimrod modern-day Iraq much of the city now lies in ruins destroyed by the group known as Islamic state in 2015 [Music] today museums can't rely solely on generous individuals and collecting isn't just about the past it's an ongoing endeavor museums represent the present for the future because when we walk into the National Museum of Scotland we see Victorian buildings and so we associate it with something that was before us but when they built them they built them as kind of messages to the future and so that's what we continue to do Henrietta Lee Chi is keeper of world cultures her department is constantly acquiring modern objects from all over the world we're developing new galleries in 2018 on China Japan and Korea so we started collecting contemporary Chinese art we have a specialist in the department who works on contemporary Iranian art and also the history of this institution in relationship to Iranian art Henrietta's own speciality emphasizes the reach of the museum's collections she collects contemporary jewelry from the American Southwest collecting is a learned skill I've been going to the southwest for 20 years I volunteered at something called Indian Market in your market is the largest gathering of contemporary native art in the whole of the USA lots of collectors go lots of museums go so you not only understand what people are making you're also understand what people are buying where the field is moving who's coming up with new iterations Henrietta's job is to work out which pieces can best represent an important artist or a culture it can be an expression of traditional life traditional sensibility traditional practice something that's gone on for hundreds of years or it can be a very contemporary snapshot of how for example native North Americans feel about their universe at that time and both of those things are valid it's not truth it's about your feeling at that moment about that world through objects in our own acquisitions Henrietta can see the contemporary story of a whole people the thing about southwestern jewelry is it does record the history of that air very clearly but then what happens in the 1960s and the 1970s is this combination of countercultural movements in the US and the American Indian Movement you can look at Jimi Hendrix or Cher and they're all festooned with jewelry it's this interweaving of artistic expression traditional wealth and modern culture so that you can see through the jewelry that in a sense Native Americans have always been both traditional and modern and that marriage of traditional and modern defines the museum today it just catapults you back to that time when you're young you're a kid and you went in there with your family and your friends and you're like okay how can I get locked in here with everyone finding out that I am here uniess all amid II grew up in western hills Edinburgh she is a model and designer and has come to see the collected works of jr. a former patron of the museum and a designer once hailed as the British Chanel the collection includes around 18,000 objects from rough sketches to beautiful complete garments first thing I've got to show you today is a really classic Jim your signature piece she's really famous for the kind of little black dress little navy dress Wow she's taking into account the female figure she really did design to flatter the female form but she wanted things to move with the body she really is interested in dance and everything for that reason has that real sense of movements I love it when you get these pieces that just look so simpler when you put them on saying about her and tight everything is actually very technically complex but looks so simple junior regarded herself as a dressmaker rather than a fashion designer her clothes were simple comfortable and effortlessly stylish her genius lay in her ability to work with a huge variety of fabrics whilst molding them all to her own recognizable style I loved the way that the skirt kind of flails out I can almost imagine what be like you know just walking down the street the fabric kind of moving and the wind and sword I think you feel amazing to wear yeah I think so too Muir trained as a lawyer before landing a job in the stockroom of the department store liberty imaginative and creative but also disciplined and steely she worked her way up becoming by the 1960s one of the most respected designers in the world the flowing sensuous cut of her clothes won her a loyal following joanna lumley was a house model for her for example and still as a fan of junior they say her designs are timeless and they actually are beyond fashion but there was more to jean muir than dark tones and little black dresses the museum houses numerous pieces which embraced bright colors but which all showcase her love of fabric and distinctive approach to form and shape so this is a jacket their jacket made from handmade felt and it's it's quite multicolored actually at its really paint aliy though you know it's almost like someone's taken a brush and that she did that a lot with her wool and she called it painting in Kashmir because Kashmir takes color so well so I suppose what that shows then is that again the tailoring the craftsmanship of the piece is so integral to the work otherwise it isn't citrate wouldn't know and I mean to get wool felt to behave as well I mean I was really tricky so quite as tough don't see whatever fabric she was working with Muir was able to stay true to her principles of creating comfortable feminine clothes and I just love this piece because she's got this drape to it mm-hmm as if it were a textile yeah but actually it is quite a substantial piece of you know animal skin and yet it's really feminine its flowing but then with the change in fabric it just becomes completely extraordinary the museum also holds jewelry designed by Jean Muir together with 400 finished garments including some of her own personal clothing it's the most complete record of this extraordinary designer okay so basically if this entire drawer went missing no with booties I would notice the new art and design galleries tell the story of style from the 13th century up to today and the new science and technology galleries show how we have created the modern world from the laboratory equipment used by Joseph black who discovered carbon dioxide to the eye limb the first commercially available prosthetic hand with five individually powered digits and from the Apple one computer one of only 200 ever built to dolly the first mammal to be cloned from an adult sale and then there's this a machine designed to unlock the secrets of the universe itself the universe is made up of matter of stuff and what we understand is that the matter is made up of molecules and that's made up of atoms believing it really tiny stuff we can actually understand the huge picture of the universe that we live in uncovering the secrets of the universe is the job of scientists at CERN one of the biggest scientific projects ever undertaken and this machine was right in the middle of it so the large electron positron Collider or le beat lip we called it was a Collider that ran at CERN through the 1990s but this thing was absolutely enormous its 27 kilometers about 17 miles all the way around was in a tunnel a hundred meters underground under the French Swiss border inside that right in the center we had these electrons in these anti electrons going around and basically smashed them together 128 of these accelerators were stationed in the tunnel the aim was to find ever smaller particles the LEP was a success yes but it was also not a success so it didn't find anything new what it did though was make very precise measurements of the stuff we already know about and because of that we ripped out let and we put in the Large Hadron Collider which is now colliding at CERN and that phone the Higgs boson the work at CERN is the building blocks of modern science research and data which will affect everything from healthcare to communications for generations to come I think it's really important that the public gets a chance to see the work that we do at CERN and the scientific work that goes on in general because in some sense they help funds that work through through tax contributions but also we don't do the work just for ourselves we do the work because eventually that there will be some benefit to humanity 150 years after this building opened the challenges remain the same to make the history of the world available accessible and comprehensible to anyone who walks in off the street this museum has never been static it's always been in a state of flux as a state of change and that's bound to be the case over the coming century and a half but certainly I'm sure that this building itself and this wonderful architecture albeit heart of the museum for many many decades to come we have never needed museums more I think you can see today this museum is back to the gunnels as people wanting to have a relationship with the things that are in front of them it's a thrill it never goes away you you

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Length: 59min 0sec (3540 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 30 2016