About Us
National Museums Scotland
National Museums Scotland is the country's national
museum service.
Our wealth of
treasures represent more than two centuries of collecting.
Collections take in everything from Scottish and classical
archaeology to decorative and applied arts; from world cultures and
social history to science, technology and the natural world. We
also provide advice, expertise and support to the museums'
community across Scotland.
Our work includes fieldwork and research and often involves
collaboration at local, national and international levels. We aim
to be a world class museums service that informs, educates and
inspires.
We have five museum sites which open to the public each showing
different parts of the collections:
In addition, our National Museums
Collection Centre is based in Granton, Edinburgh, and
houses literally millions of items - from our collection of 1.2
million insects and classic cars to whale skeletons!
Collections, advice and expertise
Our collections are a legacy which we look after on behalf of
all Scots. Our challenge is to translate the significance of the
millions of objects in our care to a wide audience. For example,
our collection of Ancient Egyptian artefacts numbers more than
6,000 and is one of the finest in the world. It includes the only
intact royal burial you can see outside Cairo, dating back to
around 1550BC.
We also provide advice and expertise to the museums community
across Scotland and close working partnerships both at home and
abroad have allowed us to bring compelling and revealing stories to
light around the world.
Education and learning
A packed programme of exhibitions and events at our five
national museums each year draw in more than one million
visitors, with hundreds of thousands more visitors taking part
in our learning activities for all ages.
School children from across Scotland have also experienced days
of discovery at National Museums Scotland as more than 50,000
school visits are enjoyed every year at each of our sites. We are
also committed to delivering a programme of outreach and
partnership projects, taking our collections across the
country into schools and through special loans to other
museums.
How we interpret our collections can increase public
understanding of human history and the natural environment. Our
research framework provides clear focus for unearthing these
stories.
Discover more
Why not discover more about us today? Click on the navigation
links above to find out more about us: our collections, policies,
corporate information, working for us, Freedom of Information
requests and contact details.