The National Museums Collection Centre at Granton, Edinburgh, provides a home for many of the objects and specimens that are not currently on display in our museums. In fact, our collections are so extensive, only a small proportion can ever be shown at once.

From butterflies to dinosaur bones, motorbikes to traction engines – the material gathered here is as diverse as it is vast. The stored material enables us to refresh exhibitions and study subjects in depth.

The Collection Centre has facilities for undertaking research on collections, as well as conservation and scientific research laboratories. Analytical equipment ranges from PDA-UPLC, XRF, SEM-EDX to XRD and FTIR.

In conjunction with the redevelopment of the National Museum of Scotland we built two new buildings at Granton, providing state-of-the-art conservation laboratories and enhanced storage for the national collections.

Access to collections at National Museums Collection Centre

National Museums Scotland welcomes formal and informal research enquiries about our collections and specimens that are on display at our four museum sites or held at our National Museum Collections Centre.

If you wish to research the collections, please contact the relevant curatorial department. Appointments have to be made in advance and we advise two working weeks as a minimum application turnaround. All research applications will be assessed according to departmental availability. 

If you wish to enquire about access to the collections for scientific research, please contact the relevant curatorial department, who will refer the enquiry to the Collections Science team for review.

If you wish to view collections or specimens from the Natural Sciences, Scottish History and Archaeology or World Cultures collections, please contact the relevant department or curator regarding arrangements. 

You can also book one of our monthly tours of the collection centre here.

How to find us

National Museums Collection Centre
242 West Granton Road
Granton
Edinburgh EH5 1JA
Tel: 0131 247 4470

National Galleries of Scotland storage

The National Galleries of Scotland also has a purpose-built storage building on site holding some of their reserve painting and sculpture collections. For information on access to that part of the site, please contact the National Galleries of Scotland directly.