Established | 1807 |
---|---|
Type | Museum and Art Gallery |
Website | https://www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/ |
The Hunterian is a complex of museums located in and operated by the University of Glasgow in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the oldest museum in Scotland. [1] It covers the Hunterian Museum, the Hunterian Art Gallery, the Mackintosh House, the Zoology Museum and the Anatomy Museum, which are all located in various buildings on the main campus of the university in the west end of Glasgow. [2]
In 1783, William Hunter, a Scottish anatomist and physician who studied at the University of Glasgow, died in London. His will stipulated that his substantial and varied collections should be donated to the University of Glasgow. Hunter, writing to William Cullen, stated that they were "to be well and carefully packed up and safely conveyed to Glasgow and delivered to the Principal and Faculty of the College of Glasgow to whom I give and bequeath the same to be kept and preserved by them and their successors for ever... in such sort, way, manner and form as ... shall seem most fit and most conducive to the improvement of the students of the said University of Glasgow."[ citation needed ]
As well as Hunter's medical collections, which arose from his own work, Hunter collected widely, often assisted by his many royal and aristocratic patrons. He and his agents scoured Europe for coins, minerals, paintings and prints, ethnographic materials, books and manuscripts, as well as insects and other biological specimens. Hunter's eclectic bequest forms the core of the collections, but have grown considerably, and now include some of the most important collections of work by artists such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and James McNeill Whistler, as well as superb geological, zoological, anatomical, archaeological, ethnographic and scientific instrument collections. [3]
The museum first opened in 1807 in a specially constructed building off the High Street, [4] adjoining the original campus of the university. [5] For this, Hunter ensured funds for its building and design by architect William Stark [6] through his three trustees: his nephew Matthew Baillie; his Scottish lawyer Robert Barclay of Capelrig House; and John Millar, cousin of William Cullen. [7] When the university moved west to its new site at Gilmorehill (to escape crowding and pollution in the city centre), the museum moved too. In 1870, the Hunterian collections were transferred to the university's present site and assigned halls in Sir George Gilbert Scott's neo-Gothic building.
At first, the entire collection was housed together and displayed in the packed conditions common in museums of that time, but significant sections were later moved away to other parts of the university. The Zoological collections are now housed within the Graham Kerr Building, the art collections in The Hunterian Art Gallery, and Hunter's library containing some 10,000 printed books and 650 manuscripts, finally received in 1807, in Glasgow University Library. Lady Shep-en-hor's coffin and possible mummy were donated to the museum in 1820 by Joshua Heywood. [8] [9] The university's Librarian Professor Lockhart Muirhead became the first Keeper of the Hunterian Museum in 1823. [10] Hunter's anatomical collections are housed in the Allen Thomson Building and his pathological preparations at the Royal Infirmary, Glasgow.
Housed in large halls in George Gilbert Scott's University buildings on Gilmorehill, the museum features extensive displays relating to William Hunter and his collections, Roman Scotland (especially the Antonine Wall), geology, ethnography, ancient Egypt, scientific instruments, coins and medals, and much more.
The museum contains many donated collections, such as the Begg Collection of fossils donated by James Livingstone Begg in the 1940s. [13]
The museum contains a high number of scientific instruments owned by or created by Lord Kelvin and other 19th century instrument makers.
In September 2016, the new Hunterian Collections and Study Centre, embracing the full range and activities of the museum and the art gallery, opened in the transformed Kelvin Hall in Phase 1 of a partnership with Glasgow City Council Glasgow Life and the National Library of Scotland. [14]
Most of the zoology collections, including those of William Hunter, are displayed in a separate museum within the Graham Kerr building, which also houses most of the university's zoological research and teaching. This is also open to the general public. The insect collections are particularly important and extensive, and have been the subject of exhibitions of note in the 2010s.
The Gallery is now housed in a modern, custom-built facility that is part of the extensive Glasgow University Library complex, designed by William Whitfield. [15] This displays the university's extensive art collection, and features an outdoor sculpture garden. The bas relief aluminium doors to the Hunterian Gallery were designed by sculptor Eduardo Paolozzi. The gallery's collection includes a large number of the works of James McNeill Whistler and the majority of the watercolours of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.
The Hunterian Art Gallery reopened in September 2012 after a refurbishment, with an exhibition dedicated to Rembrandt, Rembrandt and the Passion. [16]
The gallery has held three major Mackintosh exhibitions: Architecture (2014), [17] Travel Sketches (2015) [18] and Unbuilt (2018), [19] as well as two based on their Whistler collection Watercolours (2013) [20] and Art and Legacy (2021). [21]
The Mackintosh House is a modern concrete building, part of the gallery-library complex. It stands on the site of one of two rows of terraced houses which were once sections of Hillhead Street and Southpark Avenue, demolished in the 1960s to make room for the university's expansion across the residential crown of Gilmorehill. One of the buildings lost, 78 Southpark Avenue, was (between 1906 and 1914) the home of Glasgow architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh (although Mackintosh himself did not design it) and his wife, the artist, Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh.
The university rebuilt the form of the house (using modern materials) approximately 100 metres from the site of the original. Due to its displacement, the former front door is now located in the façade of the gallery, some distance above the ground over Hillhead Street. The Mackintosh House comprises the principal interiors of the original house (including the dining room, studio-drawing room and bedroom), largely replicating the room layout of the old end-of-terrace building. It features the meticulously reassembled interiors from the Mackintoshes' home, including items of original furniture, fitments and decorations. [22] The exhibits strikingly demonstrate Charles Rennie Mackintosh's concept of the room as a work of art. [23]
William Hunter's brother John, a surgeon, also founded a museum; the London museum of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, also known as the Hunterian Museum, is based on his collection. The museum displays thousands of anatomical specimens, including the Evelyn tables and the skeleton of the "Irish giant" Charles Byrne, and many surgical instruments. It underwent a major refurbishment in 2003 and 2004, creating a new "crystal" gallery of steel and glass.
Both brothers were celebrated in the town of their birth, East Kilbride, at the small Hunter House Museum, later closed due to budget cuts.
The University of Glasgow is a public research university in Glasgow, Scotland. Founded by papal bull in 1451 [O.S. 1450], it is the fourth-oldest university in the English-speaking world and one of Scotland's four ancient universities. Along with the universities of St Andrews, Aberdeen, and Edinburgh, the university was part of the Scottish Enlightenment during the 18th century. Glasgow is the largest university in Scotland by total enrolment and, with over 15,900 postgraduates, the fifth-largest in the United Kingdom by postgraduate enrolment.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was a Scottish architect, designer, water colourist and artist. His artistic approach had much in common with European Symbolism. His work, alongside that of his wife Margaret Macdonald, was influential on European design movements such as Art Nouveau and Secessionism and praised by great modernists such as Josef Hoffmann. Mackintosh was born in Glasgow, Scotland and died in London, England. He is among the most important figures of Modern Style.
Margaret Macdonald Mackintosh was an English-born artist who worked in Scotland, and whose design work became one of the defining features of the Glasgow Style during the 1890s to 1900s.
The Glasgow School of Art is a higher education art school based in Glasgow, Scotland, offering undergraduate degrees, post-graduate awards, and PhDs in architecture, fine art, and design.
This article is intended to show a timeline of the history of Glasgow, Scotland, up to the present day.
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, the Glasgow Girls and the Glasgow Boys. Part of the international Art Nouveau movement, they were responsible for creating the distinctive Glasgow Style.
Glasgow University Library in Scotland is one of the oldest and largest university libraries in Europe. At the turn of the 21st century, the main library building itself held 1,347,000 catalogued print books, and 53,300 journals. In total, the university library system including branch libraries now holds approximately 2.5 million books and journals, along with access to 1,853,000 e-books, and over 50,000 e-journals. The University also holds extensive archival material in a separate building. This includes the Scottish Business Archive, which alone amounts to 6.2 kilometres of manuscripts.
The city of Glasgow, Scotland, has many amenities for a wide range of cultural activities, from curling to opera and from football to art appreciation; it also has a large selection of museums that include those devoted to transport, religion, and modern art. In 2009 Glasgow was awarded the title UNESCO Creative City of Music in recognition of its vibrant live music scene and its distinguished heritage. Glasgow has three major universities, each involved in creative and literary arts, and the city has the largest public reference library in Europe in the form of the Mitchell Library. Scotland's largest newspapers and national television and radio companies are based in the city.
Frances MacDonald MacNair was a Scottish artist whose design work was a prominent feature of the Modern Style during the 1890s.
Talwin Morris was a prolific book designer and decorative artist working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, particularly known for his Glasgow Style furniture, metalwork and book designs.
James Paterson PRSW RSA RWS, was a Scottish landscape and portrait painter associated with The Glasgow Boys movement of artists. He is best known for his landscape paintings of Dumfriesshire, where he lived, at Moniaive from 1885 to 1905.
Katharine Cameron RWS RE was a Scottish artist, watercolourist, and printmaker, best known for her paintings and etchings of flowers. She was associated with the group of artists known as the Glasgow Girls.
The Artist's Cottage project is the realisation of three previously unexecuted designs by Scottish architect Charles Rennie Mackintosh. In 1901, Mackintosh produced two speculative drawings, An Artist's Cottage and Studio and A Town House for an Artist. He also drew three preliminary sketches titled, Gate Lodge, Auchinbothie, Kilmalcolm, and the final drawing for the completed building. Ninety years later the architect Robert Hamilton Macintyre and his client, Peter Tovell, began work on the first of these unrealised domestic designs, The Artist's Cottage, at Farr near Inverness, Scotland.
Robert Hamilton Macintyre TD RIBA ARIAS was a Scottish architect with a particular interest in church architecture and in the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh. He was a champion of causes to improve the arts facilities and architecture of Inverness, the Highland capital.
Windy Hill or Windyhill is a house designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh and furnished by him and his wife, Margaret Macdonald, in Kilmacolm, Scotland. It is Category A listed and remains as a home in private ownership. Windy Hill is also the name of a hill in the Clyde Muirshiel Regional Park which borders Kilmacolm.
Peter Wylie Davidson (1870–1963) was a Scottish sculptor and silversmith who taught decorative metalwork at the Glasgow School of Art from 1897 to 1935.
Evelyn Ann Silber is an English art historian and an acknowledged specialist on 20th century British sculpture. She is an honorary Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow and is researching the marketing of modernist art in early 20th century London and the role played by dealers. Having moved to Glasgow in 2001 to assume the role of Director of the Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, Silber continues to be based there and is an advocate for Glasgow’s cultural heritage, the conservation of the city, and its tourist industry. She is currently the Chair of the Scottish Archaeological Finds Allocation Panel.
Duncan Shanks RSA, RSW, RGI, is a Lanarkshire born painter best known for work made around his home in Carluke, Scotland.
James Joseph Francis Xavier King F.E.S. (1855-1933) was a Scottish entomologist, artist, librarian and lecturer at the Glasgow School of Art and Glasgow and West of Scotland Technical College. In his entomological publications King is sometimes referred to by his initials as J.J.F.X. King, and his pupils at The Glasgow School of Art gave him the nickname 'Alphabetical King.'
james livingstone begg.
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