The Senior Curator and Learning Curator gave us a talk mostly about the changes that Holyrood is currently undergoing. The Royal Collections Trust has invested 37 million pounds into a series of projects to transform the visitor experience at sites such as Holyrood. For Holyrood this will include a new Learning Centre, Welcome Centre, a new Garden and Forecourt. The plan is to open the front and side gates into the Forecourt permanently to allow general access to the public, and reconnect the Palace to the city. Here is a link which explains the objectives:
https://www.rct.uk/about/future-programme/palace-of-holyroodhouse
The Senior Curator gave us a tour of the Palace and talked about the challenges of showcasing and interpreting the Collection. The Queen’s Gallery is the largest room so they have made the most of this space to display objects in the collection and artwork.
They are currently in the process of redesigning the visitor route. There are number of factors that they have had to consider such as lighting within the rooms and conservation of fragile items (particularly tapestries). One way of preserving the tapestries and artworks was to install black mesh blinds over the windows which obstruct direct light.
They have also tried to tell the key stories associated with the Palace - the working Palace (the use of the Palace as a living Royal Residence), the Stuarts, the Jacobites and Mary Queen of Scots.
In the Royal Dining Room, there is a painting of the Queen Mother and the Senior Curator said that they needed a portrait of the Queen to sit next to it but there weren’t many within the Royal Collection. So last year they commissioned an artist Nicky Phillips, who had painted the Queen before, to portray the Queen in ceremonial robes specifically for this space. Here are some articles about it:
https://www.google.com.au/amp/time.com/5468008/queen-elizabeth-new-portrait-nicky-philipps/%3famp=true
https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/www.vanityfair.com/style/2018/11/the-queen-new-official-portrait/amp
Another drastic change was moving a well known massive painting of Charles II from Hampton Court Palace to the Holyrood Throne Room. I remember seeing the painting when I visited Hampton Court. Here is the painting:
https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Charles_II_of_England_in_Coronation_robes.jpg
A large focus of the discussion was the recent redesign of the audio multimedia guides. We got a chance to test them out, and I think they have done a really good job in making the guides interesting for both adults and children. They even interviewed Royals such as the Prince of Wales and Princess Anne specifically for the new guides.
Because Holyrood is still used as a Royal residence, there are no interpretation labels within the Gallery and not much signage, so everything is reliant on the multimedia guides to inform the public on what they are seeing.
We got given a task to assess the multimedia guides and provide feedback, and also suggest what else could be done as part of the Future Programme.
After this, we took a look at Mary Queen of Scots’ outer chamber which included her bedroom - this is the oldest part of the Palace.
We weren’t allowed to take photographs of the Palace interior but I took some of the exterior including the Abbey next to the Palace which is 900 years old.
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