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GLASGOW: Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
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For over a century Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was loved by millions and was the most visited museum in the UK outside London. For over a century Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum was loved by millions and was the most visited museum in the UK outside London.
From July 2006 it will seduce a new generation of visitors when it re-opens after its three-year, £27.9million refurbishment.
History of Kelvingrove
Glasgow’s
fine art collections had been housed in the McLellan Galleries in
Sauchiehall Street since Archibald McLellan’s death in 1854. Industrial
Collections were displayed from 1870 in the Kelvingrove Mansion which
was built for Provost Patrick Colquhoun c1783, perhaps to designs by
Robert Adam. It was situated where the skating rink now lies in the
park. Despite the building of a new wing in 1876 for other items such
as history and natural history, both the Kelvingrove Museum, as it
became known, and the Corporation Galleries of Art were considered
overcrowded and out of date.
A
large international exhibition was held in Kelvingrove Park in 1888 to
raise funds for a new Art Gallery and Museum. The profit of £41,700
was increased by extra subscriptions to well over £100,000, enabling
the Association for the Promotion of Art and Music to go ahead with
their ambitious plan for the new building. Kelvingrove was designed by
architects John W Simpson and E J Milner Allen, winners of the open
competition declared in 1892.
The
Glasgow International Exhibition of 1901 was held to celebrate and
inaugurate the new Art Gallery and Museum building. It opened on 2 May
and closed on 9 November, was visited by over 11 million people, and
yielded a profit of £39,000. It was reopened as a museum in October
1902.
Since
its opening in 1902, the Kelvingrove Collection has been recognised as
internationally significant, holding high quality collections across
the entire array of museum disciplines - European and Scottish Art arms
and armour, natural history, Scottish and Mediterranean archaeology,
world cultures and of course the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and
the Glasgow Style artists. The collection and building was valued at
£565million when refurbishment work began three years ago.
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum By Mark O’Neill, Head of Arts and Museums, Glasgow City Council
The Victorians had a great love of art and Victorian Glaswegians even more so.
When
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum opened in 1901 it was a superlative
institution - the last and greatest achievement of the civic museum
movement in Britain.
Reflecting
the pride, wealth and cultural ambition of one of the Victorian era’s
great industrial and trading cities, the new museum aimed to encompass
the entire world of art, history, archaeology and natural history.
By
the time it closed for restoration just over 100 years later, it was
one of the most visited museums in Britain attracting more than one
million visitors per year. These included 300,000 tourists, 420,000
Scots day-trippers and 300,000 Glaswegians.
Throughout
its 102 years it had also added to the marvellous objects the city
owned in 1901 to produce one of the greatest civic collections in
Europe. When it closed 4,000 objects were on display from the most
important areas of the collection including:
When
Kelvingrove reopens in July 2006, after a three-year, £28 million
restoration, all this will have been redisplayed to spectacular effect
to provide a museum for the 21st century in a stunning Victorian setting.
In
approaching Kelvingrove’s refurbishment, museum staff set themselves
the challenge of doubling the number of objects on display to 8,000.
So inspiration was sought all over the world to find new ways of
displaying and interpreting familiar favourites and innovative
techniques in architecture and design to maximise the exhibition space.
Combining
curatorial knowledge, educational expertise and public interests, staff
selected the most interesting objects and groups of objects and have told their stories in self-contained displays.
The vast museum used to be difficult for visitors to navigate, but this new approach provides a map to greater understanding.
In all there will be 22 themed galleries:
East Wing
West Wing
Most
museums provide only one type of experience, or at most two –
children’s and adult galleries. However, the display philosophy of the
new museum is based on an understanding that people learn in lots of
different ways and want to experience objects in different atmospheres
and moods.
Visitors
can choose between highly interactive galleries, which encourage
handling and discussion, and a quiet, reflective study centre which
provides more than 1,500 objects for anyone who wants to delve deeper
into the concepts and ideas presented in the main galleries.
The museum’s great art collection, with masterpieces by Rembrandt and Van Gogh, Monet
and Botticelli, Turner and Whistler, will be presented in classic
galleries – but far more accessible than ever before. For example,
visitors will be able to experience what a painting would have looked
like in the flickering candlelight of a Renaissance chapel, with period
music adding to the atmosphere!
The Mackintosh and the Glasgow
Style gallery will also be a highlight, displaying the city’s important
collection of furniture, designs and interiors by Charles Rennie
Mackintosh and works by his ‘Glasgow Style’ contemporaries in one,
comprehensive spectacle.
As well as exploring the human capacity
for creativity, Kelvingrove also recognizes a capacity for
destruction. The sword is presented as both a work of art and an
instrument of death,, while Renaissance fencing manuals and works by a survivor of Belsen concentration camp explore the realities of human conflict.
Flexibility
has become the museum’s watchword. Each gallery will exhibit between
four and eight self-contained stories on opening – a total of 100 in all. And because they are self-contained, each can be changed without the expense of redisplaying entire galleries. The
intention is that from 2008 three or four will be changed each year.
This means the museum will evolve over time, remaining fresh and
exciting.
As
if all this wasn’t enough, the building itself is a star. More than
100 years of industrial soot and grime has been peeled away to reveal
glowing, golden sandstone which has not been seen by anyone alive today.
In
addition, dozens of earlier modifications and intrusions into the
building have been reversed or removed to restore original vistas. A
subtle architectural lighting scheme has been introduced to highlight
the wonderful colonnades and ceilings. The lower ground floor –
hitherto devoted to stores, workshops and offices – has also had a
spectacular makeover to provide a quality temporary exhibition space,
an education suite and wonderful café with views to Kelvingrove Park.
In
keeping with the cutting-edge facilities offered throughout,
Kelvingrove’s distinctly Victorian amenities have been upgraded and
replaced to improve access for people with disabilities and to cater
for the legions of families expected to descend on the attraction in
its opening season.
Glasgow
has a population of 600,000 who between them make one million visits to
the city’s 12 museums each year. Add to that the museum’s status prior
to closing as Scotland’s most popular free attraction, and you can see
why its reopening is one of the most eagerly anticipated cultural
events of 2006.
Further Information:
Courtesy of SeeGlasgow.com .
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| Written by SeeGlasgow | |||||
| Wednesday, 07 May 2008 | |||||
| Last Updated ( Sunday, 01 June 2008 ) | |||||
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