Museums - McLean Museum

The McLean Museum originated in the early nineteenth century as a local history museum for the town of Greenock and its environs, produced as an outgrowth of the activities and collections of the Greenock Philosophical Society. In 1876 the museum opened in its own dedicated lecture hall and museum, financed by local timber merchant James McLean. In its early days, the museum made temorary exchanges of items with the Victoria and Albert Museums and the National Gallery, and its collecting efforts focused largely on natural history and Egyptology. Later the scope of the collection was expanded to include European and non-European art, archaeology, costume and textiles, numismatics, and more.
The McLean Museum's collections of ethnographic art come from all over the world and comprise one of the more significant groupings of such material in Scotland. The African collection includes nineteenth- and twentieth-century weapons, domestic and ceremonial items, musical instruments, and ornaments from West, East, and South Africa. West African ironwork, items from the Zulu wars, Ethiopian manuscripts, and Tiv adzes from Nigeria are just a few of the African works held at the museum. The Central and South American collection contains primarily domestic items and weapons from the West Indies, as well as pre-Columbian ceramics from Peru and Mexico. North American objects include utilitarian objects from a number of regions, some of the more significant items originating from the West Coast, Labrador, and the Great Lakes.
The museum's notable Oceanic holdings comprise weaponry, ceremonial items, and utilitarian items from all over the Pacific, including an important collection of malanggan items from New Ireland. The South Asian and Southeast Asian collections contain objects from India and the Andaman Islands, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Burma, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and Thailand. Among the varied holdings in these collections are paintings, carvings, weaponry, statuary, and religious objects.