Roaming Numeral

I can never leave a city without visiting at least one museum, can I? Both the Kelvingrove and Burrell Collection came highly recommended, but I ultimately decided to visit the Kelvingrove since it was walking distance from my hotel.

It wasn’t a quick walk, nor was it warm, but it wasn’t raining and that was basically a beautiful summer day to someone who had been rained on nearly every day for the past two weeks and I was determined to take advantage of the sunshine.

This worked out to my benefit as I was able to approach the museum via its main entrance which faces towards the Kelvingrove Park rather than towards the street. There is an urban legend in the city that the building was accidentally build backwards and the architect jumped from the top of the building when he realized his mistake- a legend strikingly familiar to one in Brussels regarding the asymmetry of the town hall building. Don’t worry, the architects made these decisions intentionally!

The pretty red sandstone building was opened to the public in 1901 and remains the most popular museum in the city- and for good reason!

The Kelvingrove hosts a vast collection of paintings, sculptures, artifacts, taxidermy, and armor from all over the world, but my favorite part was how they organized it!

Unlike most museums I’ve visited, who arrange their collections by region or medium type, the Kelvingrove seemed to organize their collection by concept. For example, there would be a taxidermy bird next to a painting of a bird next to an etching of a bird and an info plaque would explain the significance of the animal throughout various cultures and time periods.

I was very impressed by this since it really engaged me in far more exhibits that I would ordinarily visit, while engaging critical thinking about world wide cultural trends! Seriously- I’m always skipping through the taxidermy sections, but you place an armadillo next to the overlapping joints of an armored shoulder piece and I apparently loose my mind.

There were even some interactive exhibits and “behind the scenes” style displays for the artworks.

Aside from its lovely curation, the museum’s crown jewel is its concert pipe organ which offers free daily recitals at 1pm which offers a haunting atmosphere, especially when viewing the Floating Heads exhibit which left me a little unsettled.

As this is a Scottish museum, there was a heavy emphasis on Scottish artists, with whole sections dedicated to the Glasgow Boys and the Glasgow style- artists I’d never heard of but quickly became obsessed with. I particularly liked the work of Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.

In addition to its home grown artwork, I appreciated that the museum had an entire section on European colonialism and how that was relevant to their international collections- something that many museums choose to ignore.

I spent about three hours in this museum before I had to heed the call of food (I highly recommend stop by Mother India’s right across the street), but I feel like I could easily have spent at least another hour admiring the collection.

I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum jumped quickly to be one of my favorite museums in the world- and it’s not a short list!

Best of all, the museum is free to visit! It’s a must-visit museum and the perfect place to spend a rainy afternoon in Glasgow.