Collections Revealed

Sharing a selection of objects, archives and artworks that have recently been donated – including the winning photos from the recent Photographic Competition

This exhibition highlights just some of the objects and archives recently donated to Museum & Tasglann nan Eilean – the majority of which have never been on display before.

Our recent acquisitions include the 32 photographs selected as winners in our Photography Competition, held in conjunction with the Scotland’s Photograph Album exhibition on tour from the National Galleries of Scotland. As well as three prizes in each age group category the judges also selected another 23 images that were highly commended, and all 32 images have now been accessioned into the permanent collections. Entries were judged on the themes of People, Landscape, Architecture, and Community and judges were looking for originality, creativity, impact, composition and technical ability.

Like all museums and archives, we are only able to display a small percentage of our collection at any one time.  The majority of the collections are kept at our stores in Stornoway and Benbecula, and are made available for research where possible and are used in temporary exhibitions or shared online. 

During the Covid pandemic lockdown period we were able to spend time in the stores photographing, digitising and cataloguing some of the collections.  A selection of these catalogued objects are shown in the tv slideshow. The other slideshow contains a selection of photographs from our Gus Wylie collection.

It is important that the museum and archive collections reflect all aspects of life on the islands today and in the past, therefore if you have something that you think we would be interested in, and would consider donating, please get in touch and we will provide you with details of the collections committee criteria.

Thanks to National Lottery Heritage Fund Scotland which enabled us to fund the Photography Competition prizes

Special thanks to all those who have recently donated items to Museum & Tasglann nan Eilean