Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum is a museum and art gallery in

Glasgow Glasgow ( ; sco, Glesca or ; gd, Glaschu ) is the most populous city in Scotland and the fourth-most populous city in the United Kingdom, as well as being the 27th largest city by population in Europe. In 2020, it had an estimated popul ...

, Scotland. It reopened in 2006 after a three-year refurbishment and since then has been one of Scotland's most popular visitor attractions. The museum has 22 galleries, housing a range of exhibits, including Renaissance art,

taxidermy Taxidermy is the art of preserving an animal's body via mounting (over an armature) or stuffing, for the purpose of display or study. Animals are often, but not always, portrayed in a lifelike state. The word ''taxidermy'' describes the proce ...

, and artefacts from ancient Egypt.

Location

The gallery is located on Argyle Street, in the West End of the city, on the banks of the

River Kelvin The River Kelvin (Scottish Gaelic: ''Abhainn Cheilbhinn'') is a tributary of the River Clyde in northern and northeastern Glasgow, Scotland. It rises on the moor south east of the village of Banton, east of Kilsyth. At almost long, it init ...

(opposite the architecturally similar

Kelvin Hall The Kelvin Hall, located on Argyle Street in Glasgow, Scotland, is one of the largest exhibition centres in Britain and now a mixed-use arts and sports venue that opened as an exhibition venue in 1927. It has also been used as a concert hall, ...

, which was built in matching style in the 1920s, after the previous hall had been destroyed by fire). It is adjacent to

Kelvingrove Park Kelvingrove Park is a public park located on the River Kelvin in the West End of the city of Glasgow, Scotland, containing the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. History Kelvingrove Park was originally created as the West End Park in 1852, and ...

and is near the main campus of the

University of Glasgow , image = UofG Coat of Arms.png , image_size = 150px , caption = Coat of arms Flag , latin_name = Universitas Glasguensis , motto = la, Via, Veritas, Vita , ...

on Gilmorehill.

Original museum

The original Kelvingrove Museum opened in 1876. It was housed in a much enlarged 18th-century mansion called Kelvingrove House, to the north-east of the current site, that was originally the home of Lord Provost

Patrick Colquhoun Patrick Colquhoun ( ; 14 March 1745 – 25 April 1820) was a Scotland, Scottish merchant, statistician, magistrate, and founder of the first regular preventive police force in England, the Thames River Police. He also served as Lord Provost of ...

Creation (1888–1901)

Dippy the Diplodocus carnegii on tour at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in 2019

The construction of Kelvingrove was partly financed by the proceeds of the 1888 International Exhibition held in Kelvingrove Park. The gallery was designed by Sir John W. Simpson and E.J. Milner Allen, and opened in 1901 as the Palace of Fine Arts for the Glasgow International Exhibition held in that year. It is built in a

Spanish Baroque The arts of the Spanish Baroque include: *Spanish Baroque painting *Spanish Baroque architecture ** Spanish Baroque ephemeral architecture *Spanish Baroque literature **''Culteranismo'' **''Conceptismo'' *Spanish Baroque art **Bodegón **Tenebrism ...

style, follows the Glaswegian tradition of using

Locharbriggs Locharbriggs is a village in Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland. It is located near the Lochar Water, north-northeast of the town of Dumfries. It was one of several villages that stood on the edge of the Lochar Moss which was largely reclaimed in th ...

red sandstone, and includes an entire program of

architectural sculpture Architectural sculpture is the use of sculptural techniques by an architect and/or sculptor in the design of a building, bridge, mausoleum or other such project. The sculpture is usually integrated with the structure, but freestanding works that a ...

George Frampton Sir George James Frampton, (18 June 1860 – 21 May 1928) was a British sculptor. He was a leading member of the New Sculpture movement in his early career when he created sculptures with elements of Art Nouveau and Symbolism, often combining ...

, William Shirreffs,

Francis Derwent Wood Francis Derwent Wood (15 October 1871– 19 February 1926) was a British sculptor. Biography Early life Wood was born at Keswick in Cumbria and studied in Germany and returned to London in 1887 to work under Édouard Lantéri and Sir Thomas ...

and other sculptors. The centrepiece of the Centre Hall is a concert

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

constructed and installed by

Lewis & Co Lewis and Company was a firm of organ builders founded by Thomas Christopher Lewis (1833–1915), one of the leading organ builders of late 19th Century Britain. Born in London in 1833, the son of Thomas Archdeacon Lewis (1780–1862), a secre ...

. The organ was originally commissioned as part of the Glasgow International Exhibition, held in

in 1901. The organ was installed in the concert hall of the exhibition, which was capable of seating 3,000 people. The Centre Hall of the then newly completed Art Gallery and Museum was intended from the beginning to be a space in which to hold concerts. When the 1901 exhibition ended, a Councillor urged the Glasgow Corporation (now Glasgow Council) to purchase the organ, stating that without it, "the art gallery would be a body without a soul". Purchase price and installation costs were met from the surplus exhibition proceeds, and the organ was installed in the Centre Hall by Lewis and Co. The present case front in walnut with non-functional display pipes was commissioned at this time from John W. Simpson. Simpson was the senior partner of Simpson & Milner Allen, architects of the gallery building. There is an

urban myth An urban legend (sometimes contemporary legend, modern legend, urban myth, or urban tale) is a genre of folklore comprising stories or fallacious claims circulated as true, especially as having happened to a "friend of a friend" or a family m ...

in Glasgow that the building was accidentally built back-to-front, and the architect jumped from one of the towers in despair upon realising his mistake. In reality, the grand entrance was always intended to face into Kelvingrove Park.

Refurbishment (2003–06)

Kelvingrove was reopened by Queen

Elizabeth II Elizabeth II (Elizabeth Alexandra Mary; 21 April 1926 – 8 September 2022) was Queen of the United Kingdom and other Commonwealth realms from 6 February 1952 until her death in 2022. She was queen regnant of 32 sovereign states during ...

on 11 July 2006 after a three-year closure for major refurbishment and restoration. The work, which cost around £35million, was one-third funded by the

Heritage Lottery Fund The National Lottery Heritage Fund, formerly the Heritage Lottery Fund (HLF), distributes a share of National Lottery funding, supporting a wide range of heritage projects across the United Kingdom. History The fund's predecessor bodies were ...

and one-third by public donations to the appeal and included a new restaurant and a large basement extension to its display space to accommodate the 8,000 exhibits now on display. A new layout and wayfinding scheme was introduced to make the building more visitor-friendly, which was designed and executed by London-based museum design company,

Event Communications Event Communications, or Event, is one of Europe's longest-established and largest museum and visitor attraction design firms; it is headquartered in London. History The firm was founded in 1986 by businesswoman Celestine ("Cel") Phelan and des ...

. Immediately after its 2003–06 refurbishment, the museum was the most popular free-to-enter visitor attraction in Scotland, recording 2.23million visitors in 2007. These numbers made it the most visited museum in the United Kingdom outside London that year. From 2006 to 2009 the museum had 5 million visitors.

Collections

The museum's collections came mainly from the original Kelvingrove Museum and the

McLellan Galleries The McLellan Galleries are a major exhibition space in the city of Glasgow, Scotland, situated behind a frontage of shops and offices in Sauchiehall Street. History As part of the city's expansion on Blythswood Hill spearheaded by William ...

. It has one of the finest collections of arms and armour in the world and a vast natural history collection. The art collection includes many outstanding European artworks, including works by the Old Masters (Vecellio's ''

Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint Dorothy ''Madonna and Child with Saint Jerome and Saint Dorothy'' is a 1516 oil on canvas painting, now in the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow, which purchased it from the McLellan collection in 1856. The Madonna's pose is based on that of ...

'',

Rembrandt van Rijn Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

Gerard de Lairesse Gerard or Gérard (de) Lairesse (11 September 1641 – June 1711) was a Dutch Golden Age painter and art theorist. His broad range of skills included music, poetry, and theatre. De Lairesse was influenced by the Perugian Cesare Ripa and Fr ...

, and

Jozef Israëls Jozef Israëls (27 January 1824 – 12 August 1911) was a Dutch painter. He was a leading member of the group of landscape painters referred to as the Hague School and, during his lifetime, "the most respected Dutch artist of the second half of ...

), French

Impressionist Impressionism was a 19th-century art movement characterized by relatively small, thin, yet visible brush strokes, open composition, emphasis on accurate depiction of light in its changing qualities (often accentuating the effects of the passage ...

s (such as

Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet (, , ; 14 November 1840 – 5 December 1926) was a French painter and founder of impressionist painting who is seen as a key precursor to modernism, especially in his attempts to paint nature as he perceived it. During ...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir Pierre-Auguste Renoir (; 25 February 1841 – 3 December 1919) was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that "R ...

Camille Pissarro Jacob Abraham Camille Pissarro ( , ; 10 July 1830 – 13 November 1903) was a Danish-French Impressionist and Neo-Impressionist painter born on the island of Saint Thomas, U.S. Virgin Islands, St Thomas (now in the US Virgin Islands, but t ...

Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (; 30 March 185329 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionism, Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. In a decade, he created about 2 ...

and

Mary Cassatt Mary Stevenson Cassatt (; May 22, 1844June 14, 1926) was an American painter and printmaker. She was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania (now part of Pittsburgh's North Side), but lived much of her adult life in France, where she befriended Edgar De ...

Dutch Renaissance The Renaissance in the Low Countries was a cultural period in the Northern Renaissance that took place in around the 16th century in the Low Countries (corresponding to modern-day Belgium, the Netherlands and French Flanders). Culture in the Low C ...

Scottish Colourists The Scottish Colourists were a group of four painters, three from Edinburgh, whose Post-Impressionist work, though not universally recognised initially, came to have a formative influence on contemporary Scottish art and culture. The four artists, ...

and exponents of the

Glasgow School The Glasgow School was a circle of influential artists and designers that began to coalesce in Glasgow, Scotland in the 1870s, and flourished from the 1890s to around 1910. Representative groups included The Four (also known as the Spook School ...

. The museum houses ''

Christ of Saint John of the Cross ''Christ of Saint John of the Cross'' is a painting by Salvador Dalí made in 1951 which is in the collection of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow. It depicts Jesus Christ on the cross in a darkened sky floating over a body of wate ...

'' by

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish Surrealism, surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarr ...

. The copyright of this painting was bought by the curator at the time after a meeting with Dalí. Between 1993 and 2006, the painting was moved to the

St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art The St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art is a museum of religion in Glasgow, Scotland. It has been described as the only public museum in the world devoted solely to this subject, although other notable museums of this kind are the State Mu ...

. The museum also contains a large gift of the decorative arts from Anne Hull Grundy, an art collector and philanthropist, covering the history of European jewellery in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Gallery

File:Mummified man's head. There are traces of gold on his face. Find spot unknown. Greek-Roman Period, 332 BCE to 395 CE. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, UK.jpg, Mummified man's head. Greek-Roman Period, 332 BCE to 395 CE. File:The sarcophagus of the great Steward Pa-ba-sa at the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow..JPG, Sarcophagus of

Pabasa The ancient Egyptian noble Pabasa was chief steward of the God's Wife of Amun Nitocris I during the Saite Period. He is buried in tomb TT279, which is located in the El-Assasif, part of the Theban Necropolis, near Thebes. His sarcophagus was ...

File:Pipe organ, built by Lewis and Co, of London, 1901. North end of the Centre Hall. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow, UK.jpg, Pipe organ built by

, 1901. File:Head and upper body of the goddess Sekhmet, Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow..JPG, Head and upper body of the goddess

Sekhmet In Egyptian mythology, Sekhmet ( or Sachmis (), also spelled Sakhmet, Sekhet, Sakhet among other spellings, cop, Ⲥⲁⲭⲙⲓ, Sakhmi), is a warrior goddess as well as goddess of healing. She is depicted as a lioness. Sekhmet is a solar de ...

, Egypt, 18th dynasty, reign of

Amenhotep III Amenhotep III ( egy, jmn-ḥtp(.w), ''Amānəḥūtpū'' , "Amun is Satisfied"; Hellenized as Amenophis III), also known as Amenhotep the Magnificent or Amenhotep the Great, was the ninth pharaoh of the Eighteenth Dynasty. According to different ...

, 1390-1352 BCE. File:Glasgow Kelvingrovegal.jpg, The ''Floating Heads'' by Sophie Cave, 2006, in the East Court. File:Kelvingrove Spitfire.jpg, Spitfire F.21 ''LA198'' of 602 (City of Glasgow) Squadron above animals in the West Court. File:Van Gogh - Bildnis des Kunsthändlers Alexander Reid.jpeg, ''Portrait of the Art Dealer Alexander Reid'' by

, 1887. File:Rembrandt Man in Armour.jpg, ''A Man in Armour'' by

Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (, ; 15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669), usually simply known as Rembrandt, was a Dutch Golden Age painter, printmaker and draughtsman. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally consid ...

, 1655 (?) File:Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum Central Hall.jpg, The Central Hall File:Glasgow. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Mary Pownall - "The Harpy Celaeno" (1902).jpg,

Mary Pownall Mary Pownall, later Mary Bromet, (1862–1937) was a British sculptor. She was active from 1890 until 1937 and was particularly associated with Watford. Biography Pownall was born in Leigh in Lancashire in 1862. In the 1890s she was living in Bi ...

- ''The Harpy Celaeno'', 1902. File:Gauguin 1885 Le Parc d'Østervold à Copenhague.jpg,

Paul Gauguin Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (, ; ; 7 June 1848 – 8 May 1903) was a French Post-Impressionist artist. Unappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of colour and Synthetist style that were distinct fr ...

, ''Østre Anlæg Park, Copenhagen'', 1885.

References

External links

Museum website
{{Authority control Art museums established in 1901 Art museums and galleries in Glasgow Category A listed buildings in Glasgow Museums in Glasgow Edwardian architecture Spanish Baroque architecture Natural history museums in Scotland History museums in Scotland Egyptological collections in Scotland Decorative arts museums in Scotland Sandstone buildings 1901 establishments in Scotland Listed museum buildings in Scotland Geology museums in Scotland World's fair architecture in Glasgow