Partnership Development

The University housed the National Inventory Research Project, which from 2003-19 helped curators in over 200 museums across Britain research their Old Master paintings. The project was an initiative of the UK museum sector, and attracted over £900,000 in grants, employing over 30 trained art historians to undertake new research and creating up-to-date records on over 10,000 paintings. The project outcomes are published on the Visual Arts Data Service as NICE Paintings: the National Inventory of Continental European Paintings and available through Art UK. Research is thus disseminated worldwide, promoting museum collections and providing a resource for researchers, curators and the general public.

Project Partners:
National Gallery, London

Academic:
Andrew Greg

To learn more about this project or to discuss developing a partnership with the College of Arts please contact Dr Fraser Rowan the College of Arts Business Development manager by email or phone (0141 330 3885).

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At the core of the Hunterian Associates Programme is the notion that the cutting-edge research of our postgraduate researchers will connect in exciting and unexpected ways with The Hunterian’s extensive collections and create new opportunities for public engagement. As well as potentially developing new audiences for The Hunterian, this provides practical experience for the researchers in communicating beyond the boundaries of academia. The programme has been running since 2012 and has seen 48 projects completed up to 2020.

 HAP 2020/21 has produced seven more fascinating projects which you can explore via The Hunterian Associates Programme Home page.  Drawing on the collections of The Hunterian and  Archives & Special Collections, these current projects feature art and artefacts spanning the 16th, 19th and 20th centuries and touch on a variety of themes: migration, historical and contemporary (mis)perceptions about alcohol in Scotland, 19th century representations of indigenous objects from North America and the stories behind artists from the former USSR whose art now resides in the West.

Project Partners: The Hunterian 

Academic: Ruth Fletcher

To learn more about this project or to discuss developing a partnership with the College of Arts please contact Dr Fraser Rowan the College of Arts Knowledge Exchange and Impact manager by email or phone (0141 330 3885).

Prof Frances Lennard, a senior lecturer in Textile Conservation, led a team on an AHRC funded project to study Pacific barkcloth artefacts. They investigated the properties and heritage of the Pacific Barkcloth collection at the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow. Secondly, in collaboration with experts from Kew Gardens in London, they examinined the barkcloth artefacts in the Economy Botany Collection at Kew. One of the aims was to situate the artefacts in time and place, as the majority were collected during the colonial era by Europeans who asked few questions about their origins. Cutting edge technology was used to try and identify which plants were used. Another aim was to explore conservation possibilities so that the collections might be made accessible and even transportable, so that Hawaiian scholars can study them as part of their own cultural heritage. 

Academics: Dr Andrew Mills  Dr Margaret Smith, Prof Frances Lennard (retired), Ms Misa Tamura, 

Partners: AHRC, Kew Gardens, Hunterian Museum, The Smithsonian Museum of Natural History

To find out more about this project or to discuss developing your own partnership with the College of Arts please contact Dr Fraser Rowan the College of Arts Business Development Manager by phone (0141 330 3885) or by email. 

The Famen Temple in Shaanxi province was the royal temple during the Sui Dynasty (581-618) and Tang Dynasty (618-907). Treasures found in the excavation of the underground crypt in 1987 include fragile silk textiles dating from the Tang Dynasty.
In this project, metallic threads from this early period of Chinese Famen silk have been scientifically investigated in terms of their material, technology and structure.
This analysis is combined with an investigation of Chinese traditional manufacturing techniques of producing gold and silver wrapped threads, and compared with techniques still practiced today. Further research into technical categories and principles of metallic thread development is also underway. Experimental work on the ideal conditions necessary for the preservation of metal threads is ongoing.


Project Partner: Shaanxi Provincial Institute of Archaeology, China

Academic: Prof Nick Pearce

To learn more about this project or to discuss developing a partnership with the College of Arts please contact Dr Fraser Rowan the College of Arts Business Development manager by email or phone (0141 330 3885).

Equipment, materials and documents from the design and manufacture of textiles in nineteenth century Scotland are being increasingly reconnected through historical reconstructions and re-enactments to enrich museum and archive exhibitions and highlight collection significance for preservation. Replicating and using the past tools of the trade from the Scottish designer, weaver, dyer and printer means rediscovering unrecorded tacit knowledge and experimental cultures not only within each specialist practice, but also across and between them within the wider context of an industrialising world. 

ReCREATE unites a core group of academics and practitioners in arts, humanities, sciences and engineering from Scottish HEIs, museums, archives and heritage trusts with researchers across Europe to share interdisciplinary knowledge in the designing and making of decorative textiles in nineteenth century Scotland. By interrogating and challenging perceptions and conceptions about communities and individuals in past cultures of information exchange and experimentation, new research and collaborative projects are taking shape for textile heritage reconstructions in interpretation and conservation. 

ReCREATE continues the innovative partnership between History of Art and National Museums Scotland (NMS), initiated by the knowledge exchange network ReINVENT, to enhance the display and interpretation of Scotland’s textile heritage, including the inspirational new £12 million galleries for NMS’ Scottish Science and Technology and European Art and Design collections.

Partner: National Museums Scotland

Academic: Dr Anita Quye‌

To learn more about this project or to discuss developing a partnership with the College of Arts please contact Dr Fraser Rowan the College of Arts Business Development manager by email or phone (0141 330 3885).

Textile dye houses of old were secretive, protected places where dyers learnt from each other through practice and in written instructions from masters of their trade. Thanks to descendants of the Crutchley family who owned and ran a dye company on the south bank of the River Thames 300 years ago, rare records from this era have survived. The collection includes sumptuous pattern books with samples of wool ‘topped’ with red from madder and cochineal dyes, dyeing recipes and instructions, and customer names and amounts of credit.

The Crutchley Archive was donated to Southwark Local History Library and Archive in 2011, and its historical significance and need for preservation was assessed in 2014 by the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History. This established a collaborative partnership between the Southwark archivists and the University’s experts in textile history, dye analysis and textile conservation to understand and interpret the archive’s contents, and to make the archive more accessible while preserving the exquisite colours of dyed textiles protected from light for centuries.

The Crutchley archive is central in a multi-partner interdisciplinary project being developed by the University with researchers in The National Archive, University of Exeter, CNRS (France) and V&A to place its historical context with related material in other European collections.

Partner: Southwark Local History Library and Archive, London

Academic: Dr Anita Quye‌

To learn more about this project or to discuss developing a partnership with the College of Arts please contact Dr Fraser Rowan the College of Arts Business Development manager by email or phone (0141 330 3885).

A rare survival of an early nineteenth century militia jacket came to light as a result of research being carried out in preparation for an exhibition at the University of Glasgow’s Hunterian Art Gallery on Captain Laskey who was the author of the Hunterian’s first catalogue but was also a soldier in the Galloway Militia regiment.  The militia jacket found in the Dumfries collection was an example of the clothing worn by the Galloway militia and has generated much interest.

In collaboration with the University of Glasgow’s Centre for Textile Conservation and Technical Art History, the Dumfries Museum staff arranged for the jacket to be conserved as it would provide an excellent learning experience for one of the final year MPhil Textile Conservation students.  Extensive research and documentation was carried out involving liaison with Dumfries Museum’s curatorial staff, the University of Glasgow’s conservation and research staff and National Museums of Scotland curators to build a picture of the jacket’s history to inform the conservation.  This interdisciplinary collaboration enabled a significant piece of material culture to be better understood and preserved for future study and display.

Images: Top right - before conservation. Above right - after conservation.

Project Partner: Dumfries Museum

Academic: Karen Thompson, Liz Hancock

To learn more about this project or to discuss developing a partnership with the College of Arts please contact Dr Fraser Rowan the College of Arts Business Development manager by email or phone (0141 330 3885).