So when I initially heard about this exhibition and some of the funders/sponsors of it I mentally consigned it to the dustbin. As the weeks and months have gone on however I began to get reports that the content didn't take the usual line of abuse and/or self-hatred. It was, it seems "not too bad" and "a bit interesting."
The expectations of one side of the community about any project or media story covering the topics of Ireland, religion, etc, are so low as top make anything which doesn't take the ritualised line of great interest.
The exhibition opens with a wall of pictures showing Old Firm players of recent years with a distinct bias towards those signed from overseas. Then there's a bit of a jumble of books reviewed by the designer of the exhibition Roderick Buchanan - each book (normally Sottish or Irish history) and a synopsis of the books. This helps create a bit of background to 17th and 18th century politics when religion was very intertwined with how people voted and saw the world.
A fairly clever point is made by the branding of the King Sobuza Rangers Supporters Club and the Mangal Pandey Celtic Supporters Club. King Sobuza allied with the British Empire against the racism of the Boer Republic. Mangal Pandey led Indian soldiers in a mutiny. I think he's referring to people trying in various ways to stereotype.
Most people naturally centre on the two cinema-style screens which show the Black Skull and Parkhead Republican flute bands playing, and these do tend to dominate the space in the exhibition. Bands and parades are how the debate is often crystalised - they are regarded as a problem but apartheid schools and municipal corruption in Glasgow and Monklands councils are not. I think we also miss something by trying to present bands as two sides of the one coin - most republican bands supported terror, most loyalist bands are affiliated to the Orange Order or the Apprentice Boys which supported the security forces.
One piece of the work I loved is Buchanan's family circles - he uses a wall (and two pages in an accompanying booklet) and colour codes his own descendants - those from Glasgow, towns surrounding Glasgow, the Scottish Highlands, Ireland and England. It very graphically shows that claiming to be natives and immigrants for most of us is a waste of time - the scale of Irish migration (and between 25 and 33% to Scotland has been Protestant) over the lat 200+ years means that most of us are a bit of everything.
The unspoken point about his family tree is that despite the stereotypes most people form different backgrounds get along so well that the scale of intermarriage is so high it's a resounding answer to those pedaling the line that Scotland is a benighted backwater.
Buchanan could tease out more points I feel - the level of his descendants working in textiles for instance shows two points that are often overlooked when considering the history of Scotland and Ireland - 1/ how important weaving etc was to Glasgow in both and industrial sense and a social one with the Ulster weavers coming en masse to the city and 2/ that the idea of unskilled barefooted Catholic Irish coming to Scotland fleeing the Famine is largely a myth.
Another trick he has missed is not making more use of his background material - he puts a lot of interesting stuff into two folders you can flick through.
The most depressing thing about the exhibition is the feedback wall where punters stick up their own thoughts - a lot of "religion is rubbish" style comments - as if 2,000 years of Western civilization can be discounted because someone 'finds it boring' - the feedback is full of tragic examples of ignorance.
All in all - I'd recommend you visit it with an open mind.
http://www.glasgowmuseums.com/venue/showExhibition.cfm?venueid=3&itemid=152