The National Museum of Scotland is one of my favourite places in the city. It's perhaps not the most imaginative of locations to meet but standing in the Great Gallery is as healing and stimulating after long restrictions as a breath of sea air. With the glass atrium above it calls to mind the Great Exhibition or the nave of a cathedral. Indeed it is like a cathedral; a place to worship culture.
Five minute exercise
Everyone else was really good at this today. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, I sucked. But on reflection I think that was a good thing; it showed that although there is no right and wrong, sometimes it doesn't quite work out. In those situations there's no shame in dropping something and pivoting onto something else.
The task of finding something interesting immediately drew me to the foot-like giant jaw by the old entrance to the museum.
The heel - The jawbone of an ancient creature. Smooth teeth underneath but a soft palette above. From behind it looks like a heel.
Told you.
The Atrium - The light space where people pass through. Do they stop to look up? Do they sit and ponder? You can hear the clink of crockery in the cafe. The call of children, or is that the bird exhibition? Are they piping birdsong around the museum like a supermarket pumping out bakery smells?
Five minutes isn't long. Although I cocked it up, a stimulating space always has something to offer.
Main task
To find any object and write about a person engaging with it. After an abortive trip to the roof where I was followed by a loud couple, I found tucked, quite literally, in a far and forgotten corner on the fifth floor a cabinet about the first female artists to go to the Glasgow School of Art. It was one of the earliest institutions to cultivate and celebrate female artistic talent. Marion Henderson Wilson made the brass sconce pictured below around 1900.
"The woman's cause is man's, they rise or sink Together, dwarf'd or godlike, bond or free." 1908 women's suffrage poster.
Night
Marion sat in her room. It wasn't a studio, but it was all hers.
Outside the Glasgow streets were bustling with people heading home. Rain beat against the skylight and she could almost hear the soft thuds of water droplets on umbrellas.
The gas lamp flickered as though it too was out in the rainy evening air. She turned back to the brass plate and picked up her tiny hammer.
Later, it was quiet. The rain had stopped and she could hear nothing from the street below. A couple of bright stars poked though the window overhead. She looked down over her handiwork. Was it a goddess holding the moon? She looked serene, whoever she was, and more that Marion had ever felt. But they shared something; they shared the peace of her room, of the stars. They shared the night.
Thoughts
Annoyingly the loud couple followed me to the quietest corner of the museum and I had to move three times to get in Marion's headspace.
So in the end I only had about fifteen minutes to engage with Marion Henderson Wilson's wall sconce. But it was enough to get something coherent down.
I will go back, find that cabinet again and spend some time with the other female artists who are less celebrated today than they were in 1900.
It seems so wrong and I think the Nation Museum of Scotland could showcase their work, their struggle.
Hi, loving the website/blog for our Writing Group. I was going to maybe write up and share some of my writing (ahhhh!!!). Put it out there, write it somewhere else besides the safe place of my writing notebook. Then it actually exists , out in the world! Scary but I think good. To share my writing , should I share in the comment section? Is that the best way/way we can do this. Thanks :)