Kelvingrove & Glasgow the Exhibition City
Ross McDowell / Tartan Compass
Kelvingrove is one of Glasgow's great museums, born from the period when the city repeatedly turned itself into an international exhibition ground.
Kelvingrove tells a great story about Glasgow wanting to think big. International exhibitions, industry, civic pride and growing collections eventually feed into this museum created for the people of the city. What I enjoy is that the building still feels alive. Hearing the organ in that great central space changes the atmosphere completely, and there is far too much to see in one go. I would rather show somebody a few special things and then let them wander off and find their own favourites.
Kelvingrove Park hosted Glasgow's International Exhibition of Industry, Science and Art in 1888, an event designed to display the city's industrial and cultural confidence and raise money for a permanent art gallery and museum. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum opened in 1901 as Glasgow staged another international exhibition across the park. Machinery, fine art, music, international pavilions and mass entertainment all occupied the same landscape. That broad civic ambition still shapes the museum. Fine art, natural history, arms and armour, Scottish art, design and Glasgow history share one building rather than being separated into specialist institutions.
The park was exhibition ground before the museum became its permanent landmark, so the relationship between park, University and museum belongs to the story from the beginning. Inside, the deliberately broad collection helps explain why generations of Glaswegians have treated Kelvingrove as their museum as much as a visitor attraction. Individual works such as Dalí's Christ of St John of the Cross sit within that much larger civic collection rather than apart from it.
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