A new direction, 1975–90

The retirement in 1975 of Anne Robertson (who had been awarded a personal professorship in recognition of her life's work in 1974), coupled as it was with the impending inauguration of the new Hunterian Art Gallery (see p. 110), afforded to the University Court an opportunity for a comprehensive reassessment of staff structure. Court resolved to unite the various sections (Archaeology, Numismatics, Geology, Zoology, Anatomy and Fine Art) under a Director. Staff would in future be responsible to him or her, their appointments being to the Museum (and Art Gallery) specifically. The various assistant curators, recently re-designated assistant keepers, and the technical staff were to report to him. The assistant curators in Geology, originally appointed jointly to the Museum and to the Department of Geology as lecturers, were to have an agreed maximum teaching load, in recognition of past associations. All other curators were placed on the ‘other related’ pay-scale, broadly similar to academic scales. Warding staff, hitherto responsible to the University's Bedellus (head porter), were eventually taken under the umbrella of the Director, and soon provided with distinctive uniforms. The Museum Committee was reconstituted as the Museums and Gallery Committee, and its membership enlarged to encompass appropriate members of other academic departments. The honorary curators (now honorary keepers) continued in post, and were ex-officio members of the Museums Committee, to which the Director reported, but they exercised no day-to-day oversight of activities.