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| Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum |
With so many beautiful places to see in Ayrshire, it may be a mystery to some as to why I went to Glasgow for the day on the train. Taking a break for a week in the UK to a lesser known tourist region can be interesting in the planning, but it could all fall apart with the British weather. Irvine wasn't the most obvious choice for accommodation but it was quite central for me with a 30 - 40 minute railway journey into Glasgow from the nearby railway station. As you can probably guess from this set, it didn't rain that week and this was just one of the more threatening cloudy days. Apologies to anyone reading this who remembered my overlapping 2010 post.
(Just spent a week in Oban where the weather was very mixed. I was hoping to get this post published last week but life and travel always seem to get in the way of this blog. I'm not taking any breaks from here but at the moment it seems that life events have taken over.)
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| Princes Square, Glasgow |
Without research, the visitor to Glasgow can usually step off the train and find themselves on a shopping trip as I did on the first occasion. It's good to get bearings and find out where you are but Glasgow is so much more than that. I mentioned before the rivalry between Glasgow and Edinburgh in Scotland which in a sense additionally extends to visitors preferring one to the other. Edinburgh gets all the adulation as most sights are visible and in a certain area, but a lot of people I talk to, have either never been to Glasgow or haven't got past the first experience I had.
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| Gallery of Modern Art, Glasgow |
One of the most accessible sights is The Gallery of Modern Art that seems to grab peoples attention from the outside at least. I'm sitting thinking here that I've never been in the building so it would be unfair for me to comment further. This 18th century Neo classical structure was built in 1778 as a townhouse for a local Tobacco Lord and was sold to the Royal Bank of Scotland after only 40 years of use. The building was later modified with the additional external pillars and used as a business and trading exchange for 100 years. The idea of exchange continued with the conversion into a Library in 1954 and a Contemporary At Gallery in 1996.
It was time to take the Glasgow subway affectionately known as the Clockwork Orange (A circular tube line running in each direction within Orange trains) from Buchanan Street to Hillhead.
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| Charles Rennie Mackintosh house |
The designer Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his wife Margaret MacDonald, who I have covered before, lived in Glasgow from 1906 - 1914. Unfortunately the building they lived in at the end of a terrace block was demolished in the 1960s to make way for extensions to Glasgow University. The Mackintosh House as we see it today was constructed 100 metres away as part of The Huntarian Art Gallery within the University campus. It is an exact representation including the height it was built at to reflect the light coming accurately to each of the sun facing rooms. The interior is decorated entirely with Mackintosh furniture and I was not allowed to photograph any of the rooms due a recent theft. I arrived on site and just missed the 12:30 tour and it looked like I was going to be the only person on the 13:00 tour. Thankfully a female University Lecturer joined me in her lunch break for her first ever visit to the building, it was my third time and she was surprised that I travelled from Ayrshire to see it ... She asked if I was a fan of his ! Mackintosh was a lover of innovative design and despite attempts to highlight that in the 1960's, I'm not sure what he would think about the concrete these days.
Just in case you're wondering if I brought a ladder with me, that'll be a no as the entrance is accessed from a side door from the adjacent Art Gallery...
The University was founded in 1451 and is the fourth oldest in the UK, a wide variety of previous students have included John Logie Baird (the inventor of television) and Stephen Moffat (Writer and Producer of TV series Dr Who). I took a short cut through the grounds to my onward destination hoping to catch sight of the Undercroft Bute Hall.
Not wanting to feel like an intruder, I'll take a different route next time.
I didn't plan on visiting The Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum as I had written some text about it to go with photos I posted back in 2010...
However due to it's close proximity to the University and my next location, I thought it may be worthwhile paying it another visit.
It's always good to try and improve on photographic material taken almost five years ago and with hindsight I was pleased I returned.
Just to re-cap, the museum was opened in 1901 and in order to make it more user friendly and relevant, the council closed it for three years refurbishment in 2003 at a cost of £28 million pounds.
Lastly I jump (pardon the pun) towards the end of the day and a different kind of art on the end of a terrace block of houses
I had to catch the subway from Partick and there were some celebratory murals commemorating the Glasgow Commonwealth games in 2014.
And lastly a scene from the beginning of the day for those unappreciative of modern art. The Duke of Wellington statue stands outside the Gallery of Modern Art creating a little more interest to the novice in the street ...
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| Modern Art !! |
