Riverside Museum; Scotland’s Museum of Transport and Travel
Displaying the Collections
At the Riverside Museum we have tried to bring the best of the old museum of transport along
with new ways of displaying and interpreting the collections. We carried out a huge amount of
research to understand what visitors (and non-visitors) liked or did not like about the old
museum and what they would like to see at the Riverside Museum. The four most important
things wanted by visitors to the old Museum of Transport were more displays like the
reconstructed street, more access onto or up to large transport, such as locomotives and
trams, more interactive and hands on interpretation and more information, films and images
about the collections on display. At the Riverside Museum we have one literal and two
‘representative’ streets and for the first time there is access into the 'shops’. We have also
provided access platforms up to all the locomotives as well as a wide range of interpretation
including over 90 large touch screens full of images, memories and films about the collections
on display, as well as over 20 interactive hands on exhibits. We have increased the number of
objects on display from 1400 at the old museum to over 3000 at the Riverside Museum
including one of the largest locomotives on display in Britain, a large export South African
locomotive designed and made in Glasgow.
The exhibition space in the Riverside museum is no larger than the old museum of transport
and so in order to include all of these new additions, we had to make imaginative use of the
walls and spaces overhead. The only alternatives were to not provide the improvements
suggested by visitors or to put large numbers of museums objects into accessible storage at
Glasgow Museums Resource Centre. At Riverside, most of the cars, bicycles and ship
models are displayed on the floor of the museum or at eye level and there is far more
information provided about them. Of the 66 cars on display, 42 are displayed at eye level or
below. Of the 66 bicycles, 35 are displayed at eye level or below. Of the 29 motorbikes
displayed, 18 are at eye level or below and of the 122 ship models 100 are displayed at eye
level or below. The cars on the 'car wall' and the bicycles on the suspended, 'velodrome' are
interpreted from the floor (and from the first floor) by large touch screens. Each of the cars
has been photographed 360 degrees inside and out and a huge amount of other historic
photographs and information is included on touch screens. On these screens you can also
vote for vehicles in storage or displayed at height to be displayed at Riverside at ground level.
Listening to visitors, we have made six changes to the car wall and motorbike wall this year.
Glasgow Museums (including the Riverside Museum and the former Museum of Transport),
like most major museum services has never had the space to display all of the City
collections. These are stored at a purpose-built publicly accessible store, Glasgow Museums
Resource Centre (GMRC) where you can book a guided tour or to view a specific object.
There are 26 cars and 21 motorbikes and over 550 ship models stored at GMRC. Information
and bookings at 0141 276 9300 / GMRCbookings@glasgowlife.org.uk.
In the old Museum of Transport, the collections were largely arranged by type of object –
cars, motorbikes, bicycles, ship models etc. Although this is useful for comparing one type of
object with another it can limit the type of interpretation we can provide for visitors. For
example a display on transport design or vehicles used for sport or those made in Scotland
would feature more than one type of transport. In the new museum we use a mix of
displaying objects by type and also as part of a theme. There are 9 main themes within the
new museum.
These are:
1. Streets Individuals, organisations and transport innovations have shaped
Glasgow’s streets and how they were used.
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Street 1 - 1895-1930
Street 2 - 1930s-1960s
Street 3 1960s-1980s
2. The River Clyde
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Over the centuries, changes to the River Clyde have reflected developments in
Glasgow as it grew to become a major port and industrial city.
3. TranSport & Leisure
People use transport for leisure, sport or to escape the
City.
4. Made in Scotland
People in Scotland applied their skills and ideas ingenuity to transport used
throughout Britain and the world.
5. Looks & Fashion
People's tastes, styles and desires have affected the way transport is designed.
6. Crossing the World
Transport linked Glasgow with ports and cities all over the world.
7. Cutting Edge- Past, Present & Future
People's Desire to travel further, faster, higher or safer has pushed horizon’s.
8. Disasters & Crashes
Transport failure whether by accident or intent, has affected people's lives and the
way transport is designed, built and used.
9. Getting There
The ups, downs and obstacles people experience travelling around Glasgow and
Scotland.
Within these themes there are over 150 separate in-depth ‘story displays’. The theme title
appears on the interpretation panels of the individual story displays. The souvenir guide is
also organized according to these themes.
Except for the streets, the stories in one theme do not appear in the same area of the
museum. Why? This is because large objects such as locomotives and trams may have
more than one story and feature in more than one theme. Also, museum objects can be
interpreted in different ways, for example the ‘Comet’ steam engine on display could feature
in the theme ‘The River Clyde’ or ‘Made in Scotland’ or ‘Getting there’ or ‘Cutting Edge – Past
Present and Future’ or ‘Disaster and Crashes’ and if the themes were all physically in one
place then to change the interpretation would mean moving the object – not always an easy
task with large objects. Instead at the Riverside Museum the museum objects and story
displays are arranged for practical and aesthetic reasons so that we can more easily change
the interpretation or change the displays entirely without disrupting a wider theme narrative.
We have also tested the themes and story display ideas in the museum with six advisory
panels representing families with children, sensory impaired visitors, teenagers, school
groups, education specialists and Academic historians and museum interpretation experts
and they supported our approaches. The overwhelming response from visitors to the museum
to date has been very positive. However, we recognise that there is much more we can do
and we want to change the displays in response to visitor interest. To inform display changes
we have included several visitor feedback stations where visitors can let us know what they
think via touchscreens or conventional paper feedback forms. The displays have been
designed to be more easily changed than those at the Museum of Transport so that we can
more easily include new museum objects, new information or completely new displays.
There is no temporary exhibition space at the Riverside Museum and so we want to
concentrate our limited resources on changing the displays we have. The Riverside Project
also enabled the creation of the online ‘Collections Navigator’ which provides an online
overview of the collections see collections.glasgowmuseums.com.
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