“In many respects it’s a complete change of life for me – it’s more than just moving jobs,” says Steph Scholten, the new director of the Hunterian Museum, which is part of the University of Glasgow. He was previously the director of heritage collections at the University of Amsterdam, but has had to move away from his family in the Netherlands to take up his new role in Scotland.
The Hunterian opened in 1807 and is the oldest public museum in Scotland. Founded with the collections that the Scottish anatomist and obstetrician William Hunter bequeathed to the University of Glasgow, the organisation now comprises a number of sites – the Hunterian Museum, Hunterian Art Gallery, Mackintosh House, the Hunterian Zoology Museum and the Anatomy Museum are all in Glasgow, while the Hunterian in the South showcases the collection at the university’s Dumfries campus.
More significant than the number of sites, though, is the recent relocation of around 1.5 million items to the purpose-designed study and storage facilities at Kelvin Hall, the newly refurbished building opposite Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It is here that the Hunterian Collections Study Centre has been set up to offer a state-of-the-art environment for research, teaching and training.
“There’s a lot of really hard work that we’re still doing – we’re still decanting eight or nine collections into this new big store,” says Scholten, whose office is also at Kelvin Hall where all the Hunterian staff are now.
“The process started in November 2016, the assumption being that there were about a million items, but it turns out it’s more like 1.5 million,” Scholten says. “Of course when you’re moving home, or premises like this, you find all sorts of stuff that you didn’t know you had. It’s a huge job, even with our new collections management software. There’s all the things that need doing for each object, from conservation, to cleaning and packing.”
Have there been any surprises? “We haven’t found a Rubens like they did at Pollok House recently, but we have found things that we thought we no longer had, and that our collections are a lot richer than we thought.”
The aim is that this huge number of objects will be available for academic learning and public engagement. “We now have spaces devoted to engagement, teaching, and research using the museum’s collections,” he says. “It’s something really new for the university.”
Student bodies
Scholten is not unfamiliar with university museums, having moved from his previous job at the University of Amsterdam.
“One of the nice things about the University of Amsterdam and the Hunterian Museum is that they both have very large collections,” he says. “Amsterdam’s are more deep and specific in certain areas though, while Glasgow’s collections are good all round. There’s more potential to tie into the academic side.”
One of the more traditional venues he leads, the Anatomy Museum, is regularly used for teaching students. “We run a service in the university chapel once a year to thank the people and families who donate their bodies to science. About 100 bodies are dissected in the museum every year.”
Whether it is the display of human remains, or diversity in the museum sector, it is ethics that really makes Scholten tick.
“It all started with conservation ethics when I was working at the National Institute for Conservation in Holland, and then at the Museum of Antiquities in Leiden,” Scholten says. “There were a lot of providence issues with illegally exported things, looted art, displaying human remains or deaccessioning objects. I got so interested that I did an exhibition on ethical dilemmas in museums.”
Out of that Scholten got involved in rewriting the deaccessioning rules for Dutch museums, became a member of the ethics committee of the Dutch museums association, Museumvereniging, in 1999, and has recently joined the ethics committee for the International Council of Museums.
Scholten says there’s definitely a much more pronounced effort to be inclusive in UK museums than in the Netherlands.
“There seems to be a much stronger tradition in the role that museums play in the empowerment of people in the UK.”
Scholten had to do an equality and diversity test when he began his new role, which he says was very useful.
“One of the exercises was to fill out your characteristics – I’m a man, I’m white, I’m middle-aged, I’m married, I have children, my education is good. It turns out I’m actually a very small minority in Glasgow. If you look at the city it’s just lots of minorities that together make the majority.”
He’s keen to make the Hunterian Museum’s collections as accessible as possible, but poses the quandary: “We need to give access to as many people as we can by removing as many barriers as possible, but at the same time I don’t want to dumb down.”
Recently, a visitor said they were offended by the way one of Hunter’s gynaecological specimens was displayed and how the female subject didn’t seem to be considered enough in the way the specimen was interpreted. Scholten says the label was amended to be more inclusive as a result of this, and it’s something he has to keep a close eye on, with so much of the museum’s core collection being anatomical remains.
William Hunter anniversary
Interpretation is a key aspect that Scholten and his team will be concentrating on as they enter the tercentenary of William Hunter’s birth in 2018, which the museum will be celebrating with a number of exhibitions, most notably their autumn slot. “We’ll probably call it the Anatomy of the Museum, which will look at how the Hunterian’s collection was constructed, the story of Hunter and his brother and the museum’s origins.”
Parallel to the exhibitions, outreach, and academic programmes is the second phase of the Kelvin Hall development. Scholten will be working and fundraising hard in order to create new public exhibition and visual arts spaces for the Hunterian at Kelvin Hall with an aim to open them by 2020. This will form part of a new cultural quarter in the west end of Glasgow, with partner institutions such as the Gallery of Modern Art and Kelvingrove.
Scholten says he’s still getting used to lots of things in Glasgow, including the fact he has to take an umbrella to work every day.
“I’ve also recently learnt that the average Glaswegian visits a museum 2.3 times a year, which is a phenomenal number,” he says. “That’s a huge success. And then I see people still struggling with the thought that there’s 20% of people that aren’t visiting, and defining it as a major problem, while I would say it is fantastic. That’s 80% of the population that’s visiting museums. You would never find that in the Netherlands.
He has worked as a policy adviser for the Dutch Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, where he worked on the creation of the National Institute for Conservation Art and Science in Amsterdam. He later became the head of its conservation research department.
He was appointed the head of collections at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden in 2002, before moving to be the director of Heritage Collections at the University of Amsterdam in 2009.
He took up the role of director of the Hunterian Museum, run by the University of Glasgow, this year.
He sits on the ethics committee for the International Council of Museums, and, as part of his new role, will teach a couple of days a year at the University of Glasgow.
Run by the University of Glasgow, the Hunterian was set up with the collection of the obstetrician William Hunter (1718-1783) at its core. The organisation now comprises the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Hunterian at Kelvin Hall, Mackintosh House, the Anatomy Museum, the Zoology Museum and the Hunterian in the South.
The Hunterian Collections Study Centre at Kelvin Hall opened in 2016 as a study and storage facility. Around 1.5 million items from the collections are being relocated to the centre.
The next phase of the redevelopment will see all of the museum’s public displays relocated to Kelvin Hall by approximately 2020.
The Hunterian opened in 1807 and is the oldest public museum in Scotland. Founded with the collections that the Scottish anatomist and obstetrician William Hunter bequeathed to the University of Glasgow, the organisation now comprises a number of sites – the Hunterian Museum, Hunterian Art Gallery, Mackintosh House, the Hunterian Zoology Museum and the Anatomy Museum are all in Glasgow, while the Hunterian in the South showcases the collection at the university’s Dumfries campus.
More significant than the number of sites, though, is the recent relocation of around 1.5 million items to the purpose-designed study and storage facilities at Kelvin Hall, the newly refurbished building opposite Glasgow’s Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. It is here that the Hunterian Collections Study Centre has been set up to offer a state-of-the-art environment for research, teaching and training.
“There’s a lot of really hard work that we’re still doing – we’re still decanting eight or nine collections into this new big store,” says Scholten, whose office is also at Kelvin Hall where all the Hunterian staff are now.
“The process started in November 2016, the assumption being that there were about a million items, but it turns out it’s more like 1.5 million,” Scholten says. “Of course when you’re moving home, or premises like this, you find all sorts of stuff that you didn’t know you had. It’s a huge job, even with our new collections management software. There’s all the things that need doing for each object, from conservation, to cleaning and packing.”
Have there been any surprises? “We haven’t found a Rubens like they did at Pollok House recently, but we have found things that we thought we no longer had, and that our collections are a lot richer than we thought.”
The aim is that this huge number of objects will be available for academic learning and public engagement. “We now have spaces devoted to engagement, teaching, and research using the museum’s collections,” he says. “It’s something really new for the university.”
Student bodies
Scholten is not unfamiliar with university museums, having moved from his previous job at the University of Amsterdam.
“One of the nice things about the University of Amsterdam and the Hunterian Museum is that they both have very large collections,” he says. “Amsterdam’s are more deep and specific in certain areas though, while Glasgow’s collections are good all round. There’s more potential to tie into the academic side.”
One of the more traditional venues he leads, the Anatomy Museum, is regularly used for teaching students. “We run a service in the university chapel once a year to thank the people and families who donate their bodies to science. About 100 bodies are dissected in the museum every year.”
Whether it is the display of human remains, or diversity in the museum sector, it is ethics that really makes Scholten tick.
“It all started with conservation ethics when I was working at the National Institute for Conservation in Holland, and then at the Museum of Antiquities in Leiden,” Scholten says. “There were a lot of providence issues with illegally exported things, looted art, displaying human remains or deaccessioning objects. I got so interested that I did an exhibition on ethical dilemmas in museums.”
Out of that Scholten got involved in rewriting the deaccessioning rules for Dutch museums, became a member of the ethics committee of the Dutch museums association, Museumvereniging, in 1999, and has recently joined the ethics committee for the International Council of Museums.
Scholten says there’s definitely a much more pronounced effort to be inclusive in UK museums than in the Netherlands.
“There seems to be a much stronger tradition in the role that museums play in the empowerment of people in the UK.”
Scholten had to do an equality and diversity test when he began his new role, which he says was very useful.
“One of the exercises was to fill out your characteristics – I’m a man, I’m white, I’m middle-aged, I’m married, I have children, my education is good. It turns out I’m actually a very small minority in Glasgow. If you look at the city it’s just lots of minorities that together make the majority.”
He’s keen to make the Hunterian Museum’s collections as accessible as possible, but poses the quandary: “We need to give access to as many people as we can by removing as many barriers as possible, but at the same time I don’t want to dumb down.”
Recently, a visitor said they were offended by the way one of Hunter’s gynaecological specimens was displayed and how the female subject didn’t seem to be considered enough in the way the specimen was interpreted. Scholten says the label was amended to be more inclusive as a result of this, and it’s something he has to keep a close eye on, with so much of the museum’s core collection being anatomical remains.
William Hunter anniversary
Interpretation is a key aspect that Scholten and his team will be concentrating on as they enter the tercentenary of William Hunter’s birth in 2018, which the museum will be celebrating with a number of exhibitions, most notably their autumn slot. “We’ll probably call it the Anatomy of the Museum, which will look at how the Hunterian’s collection was constructed, the story of Hunter and his brother and the museum’s origins.”
Parallel to the exhibitions, outreach, and academic programmes is the second phase of the Kelvin Hall development. Scholten will be working and fundraising hard in order to create new public exhibition and visual arts spaces for the Hunterian at Kelvin Hall with an aim to open them by 2020. This will form part of a new cultural quarter in the west end of Glasgow, with partner institutions such as the Gallery of Modern Art and Kelvingrove.
Scholten says he’s still getting used to lots of things in Glasgow, including the fact he has to take an umbrella to work every day.
“I’ve also recently learnt that the average Glaswegian visits a museum 2.3 times a year, which is a phenomenal number,” he says. “That’s a huge success. And then I see people still struggling with the thought that there’s 20% of people that aren’t visiting, and defining it as a major problem, while I would say it is fantastic. That’s 80% of the population that’s visiting museums. You would never find that in the Netherlands.
Steph Scholten at a glance
Steph Scholten grew up in Holland and studied art history at the University of Amsterdam.He has worked as a policy adviser for the Dutch Ministry of Education, Science and Culture, where he worked on the creation of the National Institute for Conservation Art and Science in Amsterdam. He later became the head of its conservation research department.
He was appointed the head of collections at the National Museum of Antiquities in Leiden in 2002, before moving to be the director of Heritage Collections at the University of Amsterdam in 2009.
He took up the role of director of the Hunterian Museum, run by the University of Glasgow, this year.
He sits on the ethics committee for the International Council of Museums, and, as part of his new role, will teach a couple of days a year at the University of Glasgow.
The Hunterian at a glance
Founded in 1807, the Hunterian is Scotland’s oldest public museum. Run by the University of Glasgow, the Hunterian was set up with the collection of the obstetrician William Hunter (1718-1783) at its core. The organisation now comprises the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Hunterian at Kelvin Hall, Mackintosh House, the Anatomy Museum, the Zoology Museum and the Hunterian in the South.
The Hunterian Collections Study Centre at Kelvin Hall opened in 2016 as a study and storage facility. Around 1.5 million items from the collections are being relocated to the centre.
The next phase of the redevelopment will see all of the museum’s public displays relocated to Kelvin Hall by approximately 2020.