As part of ongoing work on the University’s historic loans, Collections Registrar, Morven Rodger, investigates the history and provenance of the University’s John Rae collection.
In July 1926, the University Court agreed to lend the “John Rae Collection of Arctic and Other Relics” to the Royal Museum of Scotland. Almost a century later, The Royal Museum is now the National Museum of Scotland, and John Rae’s items remain on loan, but how and why did the University come to have these items in the first place?