Public Performance Reporting

Museums and Galleries

We are based at Rozelle House Galleries in Alloway, next to the Maclaurin Galleries, which we operate in partnership with the Maclaurin Trust. At Rozelle you will also find our craft shop, the Rozelle Tea Room and the Ayrshire Yeomanry Museum. During 2006/7, our collections attracted 40,774 visitors.

A popular attraction at Rozelle House is the display of 54 paintings on the theme of Tam O’ Shanter by Alexander Goudie,. These were purchased by the Council, with funding provided by the T.B. Hunter Charitable Trust, The Fraser Foundation and the Souter Foundation.

In addition to fine art, our collection includes natural history, geology, textile, costume, archaeology and social history, with material from the former burghs of Ayr, Maybole, Troon, Girvan and Prestwick.

As we have no established museum to display all of these collections, small themed displays are mounted, when possible, at locations throughout South Ayrshire. One such venue is the McKechnie Institute in Girvan, which is managed by the Museums and Galleries service.

A complete listing of the Council’s museum and art collections is currently being compiled. Where items are not on display, they can be made accessible to the public by prior arrangement.

We have also been working with the Future Museum Project to allow people to access our collections via the intranet. A growing number of images are being added and can be seen be logging on to: www.futuremuseum.org.uk.

Looking forward to 2009 and the Year of Homecoming, we look forward to welcoming new visitors to our collections, Local History Library and the Ayrshire Archives Centre.