Description: Marischal College, part of Aberdeen University, is the largest granite building in Great Britain and is a testimony to the skills of the city’s builders in working in granite. They built their city of granite with Marischal College as their crowning masterpiece. Its tall steely-grey pinnacled neo-Gothic facade was once described as ‘a wedding cake covered in indigestible grey icing’ – it is a most astonishing piece of sculpture.
Located within is Marischal Museum. It holds donations by graduates and friends of Aberdeen University since its establishment in 1786. The collection contains 80,000 items in five broad areas: fine art, Scottish history & archaeology, European, Mediterranean & Near Eastern archaeology, non-Western ethnography and, coins and medals. The art collection includes important 17th, 18th and 19th Century Scottish portraits and views of Aberdeen.
The main museum displays are in two large galleries on the first floor. The one was designed as the college library in 1837 and still contains the original elaborate woodwork. It holds ‘The Encyclopaedia of the North-East’ a collection of local material. The other gallery has been modernised with a steel mezzanine floor to display the ‘Collecting the World’ exhibition. Temporary exhibitions are held in specially designed areas of both galleries.
The Encyclopaedia running alphabetically from Aberdeen through to Whisky is devoted to the character of this area of Scotland. Hundreds of objects, photographs and quotations are displayed to illustrate the area from the first settlers of 8000 years ago to the present day. Arranged in alphabetical order it creates some surprising ordering of objects of different ages and functions and an urge to sort it into a more logical order.
Material on display includes items associated with the history of the University such as the maces of the Colleges, prehistoric beakers, carved stone balls, flint tools and Pictish stones. More recent objects relate to fishing, farming, and folklore of the area. The current copy of the local newspaper, the Press and Journal, is used to emphasise the contemporary concerns of the exhibition. Some of the highlights of the University's other collections, such as paintings, scientific instruments, and natural history specimens are also displayed in this exhibition.
The collection of material from throughout the world displays a diverse range of curiosities, including an ancient high-relief mummy case of a five-year old Egyptian girl, a late 18th century Maori wooden box, a medieval silver chain found under Marischal College and a stomach-churning human foot unbound and preserved in brine. Look out too for a kayak discovered off the coast of Aberdeen around 1700 with the preserved body of an Inuit fisherman inside.
It is not only the objects that are interesting but also how they came to be in the collection. The museum explores this angle starting with a reconstruction of a collector's study. The collectors have served in just about all endeavours of human interest.
This quaint collection inside such a wondrous building is well worth a look. Admission is free.
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