Student curator of our current exhibition ‘The Land Endures: Bringing Sunset Song to Life’, Sebastien tells us about his favourite objects in the exhibition and why he finds them so fascinating:
‘These four objects are part of a collection of First World War medals awarded to Charles Luther Gordon, a 2185 Private Gordon highlander soldier. Private Gordon served in 1st Battalion of the Gordon Highlanders and later joined the regiment in Accrington, Lancashire. These medals include the 1914-15 Star, a British War Medal 1914-20, a Victory Medal 1914-18, and a ‘Dead man’s penny’ for a soldier killed in action on 2nd March 1916.
I chose these objects as I wanted to research something a little different from the objects that highlight home-life in North East Scotland which make up a large amount of the exhibition. While these objects represent an integral part of the history of North East Scotland, I feel the medals are equally as important. The Gordon Highlanders were an integral part of the British Army since the Napoleonic Wars in 1794, under Duke Gordon’s tutelage. In my opinion, these medals are a very important to exploring north East Scotland’s importance as a region in a wider context.
I found the link of these medals to the novel Sunset Song particularly interesting as well. For example the 1914-15 Star is used to represent Chae Strachan and his excitement when the war began, resulting in his early departure to the Western front. This early period also represent’s Chae’s brief exposure to the traumatic experiences of war and how this completely changed his personality, frequently questioning the Kinraddie community’s behaviour and wrongdoing. Moreover ,the British War Medal and Victory Medal could both represent Long Rob and Chae for participating in the First World War itself. Finally, the Dead Man’s Penny represents Long Rob and Chae’s commemoration of their brave deaths.
Thanks you for reading and stay tuned for more discoveries at the exhibition, hope to see you there!’
Written by Sebastien Raybaud, Student Curator
“As a director of the Grassic Gibbon Centre in Arbuthnott, I was delighted to attend the opening of the exhibition “The Land Endures: Bringing Sunset Song to Life” at King’s Museum, Old Aberdeen Town House. I was particularly impressed by the imitativeness of the presentation of the exhibits, the meticulousness of the display and the rigour of the research behind the project. 
The exhibition remains open until the 30th of November 2016. For those people with an interest in Scottish literature or in the social history of Scotland, an hour would be very well spent appreciating the efforts of these talented young people in the appropriately historic and characterful surroundings of Old Aberdeen.”
The exhibition space of the centre tells the life of the author, describing the most important events of his life through the use of original objects and items from the period. Among the many facts that we discovered on our trip what we found particularly interesting was that although Lewis Grassic Gibbon was his pen name, his real name was Jamie Leslie Mitchell and published 18 novels and short stories, an impressive feat for a man of only 34!
After visiting the centre, we visited a rural church nearby in which a grave is set in the memory of Lewis Grassic Gibbon. This gave us the chance to explore one of the local settings used in the film adaptation of Sunset Song (2015) by Terence Davies, which was partly shot in Aberdeenshire.
‘The University of Aberdeen Museums latest event, Night at the Museum – Animal Armoury was a very fun-filled night. As a Museum Studies student it was part of my studies to develop some crafts and activities for the night. With the idea of camouflage in mind we developed a Jungle in 90 High Street event space to set the scene for object handling and many more fun activities we had planned!
Many of us spent a lot of time over the past few weeks preparing the jungle so we were so happy that the night was a success and so many visitors came to the jungle to get involved. They had a great time trying to spot the camouflaged animals in our interactive game on display and match the weapons with the animals that inspired their creation.
This large family even was very popular and enjoyable for all ages, getting the opportunity to see the museums at night and get involved in the activities on offer was great fun even as a volunteer, I will definitely be coming to the next one!’
The exhibition currently on view in the MacRobert building at the University of Aberdeen, 
I see many parallels between my curatorial practice and that of Richard Demarco, a Scot of Italian origin (based in Edinburgh) who was the first to invite pioneering artists from Europe to Scotland and the UK. Long before I arrived in the UK (I am originally from the US), Demarco invited many of the artists that I currently research, in my work on performance art, to perform and exhibit in the UK. In addition to conducting research and organizing performances and exhibition, I am also attempting to build and foster relationships between artists and arts practitioners in Europe with the hopes of bringing them to, or showcasing their work in, the UK. While Edinburgh and Glasgow are the usual destinations for artists, I think it is important to recognize that art is something that is happening and can happen in many places – including Aberdeen. Demarco felt similarly, and invited artists to perform not only in Edinburgh, but in Aberdeen and across Scotland, even in the Highlands.
The prehistoric monuments of Orkney are well known, but the stone tools found on the archipelago have received far less attention. In order to redress the balance the Leverhulme Trust funded project ‘Working stone, making communities: technology and identity in prehistoric Orkney’, directed by Prof Mark Edmonds, University of York, has spent the last two years recording Mesolithic to Bronze Age Orcadian stone tools held in museum collections across Scotland. This detailed analysis has allowed comprehensive descriptions of the full range of Orcadian flint and stone tools to be prepared, refining typologies, dating and our understanding of production techniques.
University of Aberdeen Museums hold a small number of Orcadian stone tools including a fine late Neolithic pestle macehead and an early Bronze Age battle-axe. The macehead is one of only 100 from Orkney and its strongly concave sides place it in a small group of ‘Orkney’ pestle forms; like most examples from Orkney this macehead is broken across its perforation. The battle-axe is one of only ten from the archipelago and like many it is superficially well finished, but closer inspection reveals that the perforation was not completed. Photographic illustrations and 3D models of these tools have been prepared for a web resource on Orcadian stone tools that will be launched in early 2017.
The University of Aberdeen Museums recently hosted their first Museums Late: Fire and Ice, an evening event catering to the 18+ crowd. Hosted in the Zoology Building, this event wonderfully combined all the fun of a night at the museum with an adult evening out.
The activities themselves were engaging and captured my attention for the majority of the evening. I greatly enjoyed animal handling where they had a great mix of the cute and cuddly as well as the scaly and slightly creepy. The science experiments in the foyer were fantastic and great fun to watch. The academic side such as the glacier and volcanoes talk was also good fun; presented in an accessible and engaging manner so as to not just educate, but entertain. The object handling also added to the usual museum experience as you were able to touch and experience museum pieces in more detail, from Inuit carvings to the core of another planet!
Student volunteers help out all around the museums; welcoming visitors to exhibitions, cleaning and cataloguing objects, and volunteering at our events. As well as this societies such as the Malt Whisky Society and the Celtic Society have been teaming up with the museums to participate in show-and-tells of historic objects during their events.
President of the Celtic Society, Tasha Madigan, was immediately drawn to this Gaelic prayer book and states:
King’s Museum volunteer Jana Bielikova loves these Inuit snow Goggles, describing them as:
Anja Meyer, the President of the Malt Whisky Society chose to include these Pictish beads in the exhibition, remarking:
Zoology Museum volunteer Brendan Latham chose to include this Sea mouse from the Dornoch Firth as he grew up on the Isle of Harris and was fascinated to discover that these creatures were around him and he never knew:
University of Aberdeen Museums 