Wishing all my friends on FlickR a happy new year for 2008.


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:

Italian and Dutch Old Master paintings
French Impressionist and post-Impressionist paintings
Late 19th and early 20th century Scottish art, including the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the ‘Glasgow Style’ school of artists
Ancient Egypt – unusually well documented objects collected from professional excavations to which the museum subscribed in the 1890s
Aspects of the history of Scotland – and of Glasgow’s impact on the world
West of Scotland Archaeology – including Bronze Age burials and life on the River Clyde in the Stone Age
Natural history of Scotland and the world, from prehistoric fossils to birds in local gardens, and from kangaroos to elephants
Art and artefacts from dozens of cultures all over the world to which Glasgow traders, missionaries, soldiers and engineers had travelled
Arms and armour, second only to the Royal Armouries in quality and range

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
Art Discovery Centre
Dutch Art
Every Picture Tells a Story
Expression (East Court)
French Art
Italian Art
Looking at Art
Looking at Design.
Mackintosh and the Glasgow Style
Scottish Art: the Glasgow Boys and Scottish Colourists
Scottish Identity in Art

West Wing
Ancient Egypt.
Conflict and Consequence.
Creatures of the Past.
Cultural Survival.
Glasgow Stories.
History Discovery Centre
‘Object Cinema’ (Artic Lives).
Environment Discovery Centre.
Life (West Court Parade of Animals & Spitfire)
Scotland's First Peoples.
Scotland's Wildlife.

Study Centre

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 instrume

Found this lovely illustration in a book I bought at an estate sale. Namely, "School Sanitation and Decoration: A Practical Study of Health and Beauty in their Relations to the Public Schools" by Severance Burrage, S.B. and Henry Turner Bailey. It was published in 1899, and is a very charming and interesting book. Very stuffy and Victorian in some places, it's very idealistic and romantic in other places, trumpeting the virtues of exposing children to art from a very young age, and how beautiful surroundings in the classroom will equal a beautifully raised child. It's very specific about what kind of art is suitable for which ages of children, and is very detailed in explaining their theories. It's also quite "modern" concerning furnishings and bathrooms, etc. for schools, noting that things should be designed for the child's comfort and safety. I really like it, $1.00 well spent!