Our thanks to all after thousands visit Orkney Museum exhibition

Our summer exhibition at the Orkney Museum came to an end on Saturday, September 28, with 62,000 visitors recorded over the past five months.

The work to dismantle the major exhibition – Ness of Brodgar: Past, Present & Future – began on Monday morning, with Mark Edmonds, Katy Firth, Anne Mitchell and Norna Sinclair starting in the closed-to-the public upper gallery.

Anne disappeared early to start putting away the display of 80 storage boxes, transferring them to our storage spaces at the UHI Archaeology Institute and in Stenness. The others, who had designed and set up the exhibition, then began removing the perspex case-covers, sorting out the numbered boxes and bags for each find ( there must no mix-ups!), checking against photos taken before each case was set up, rewrapping the delicate bones and pieces of pot in acid-free tissue and, ever-so carefully, rebagging and boxing the exhibits.

The information panels came down, labels and numbers were gathered up and plinths/stands carefully packed away ready for their next outing. Almost all the three exhibition areas were packed away by 7.30pm on Monday – a long day for all but a job well done. 

On Tuesday morning, again at 8am, Mark and Anne set about loading boxes to be taken out to the Ness and preparing the various big, very heavy and very precious decorated stone for its trip westwards by local removal firm McAdie & Reeve.

By 11.30am there was barely a trace of the Ness’ summer presence. Mark Scadding had the upstairs gallery ready for the next exhibition and Maureen had everything polished, the floors washed and display plinths moved to their next space.

Our thanks go to all the Orkney Museum team – Mark, Maureen, Nick, Siobhan and Tom – for making this whole enterprise so easy and rewarding. Here’s to our next collaboration. Thank you also to the museum front-of-house team who we know had to answer many questions about the final season of fieldwork at the Ness.

Thank-yous also go to our speakers, who gave splendid tours of the exhibition over the summer –  Kath Page, Sarah Jane Haston, Gary Lloyd, Karen Wallis and Jackson Clark. And to Professor Mary Beard for opening the exhibition; the OIC Culture Fund, The Orcadian and the Orkney Heritage Society for their financial support; Orkney Archaeology Society for their help in making the expedition possible; Ian Ashman for excellent design work; Katy Firth and Norna Sinclair, who, yet again, opened up the boxes and bags of Ness treasures and created a breathtaking exhibition.

And lastly, to all the folk who piled through the Orkney Museum’s doors to make it a summer to remember for everyone involved.