Monthly Archives: March 2016
Kelvingrove and Hunterian Museum in Glasgow
It takes about 20 minutes by foot from Glasgow center to the Kelvingrove Museum & Art Gallery and The Hunterian venues on the Glasgow University campus.
I like the eccentric mixture in British city museums and the Kelvingrove is not an exception.
An area of the museum is dedicated to art during the Holocaust. The objects are arranged in a corner and spread out along the aisle. On the other site allured a huge vitrine with an impressive Scottish sword collection the visitor. Hard to decide on what to look at.
The current temporary exhibition presents etchings from the war artist Percy Smith about the human tragedy of the WWI. Odd to see a gas mask on an etching piece. The next cabinet states: I wanted to conquer Paris with an apple. Paul Cezanne. The blackness of death and the colour of fruit easily come hand in hand here: look out for the unexpected in British Museums!
What really got me today was the permanent display in the Hunterian Museum. The Hunterian actually consists of an art gallery, an anatomy museum, a zoology museum and the Hunterian Museum. The rather small Hunterian Museum presents archaeological, paleontological, geological, zoological, entomological, ethnographical and numismatic highlights. The artefacts are well-considered picked and affectionately presented and the exhibit hall gives a – not less then – superb impression.
Both venues plus a fish & chips serving made a reasonable day in Glasgow!
Strange Terms For Grand Types Of Books
I found this passionate article about incunables and facsimiles published in the magazine of The National Library of Scotland DISCOVER: La Hypnerotomachia di Poliphilo by Francesco Colonna (1499) supposed to be one of the most beautiful incunabula ever printed and William Morris’s Edition of The Works of Geoffrey Chaucer (1896) witnessed the aesthetic choices of the 19th artistic craftsmanship in contrast to industrialisation and mass production.