THE history of Glasgow is to come alive with a series of major exhibitions at the city's art galleries and museums.
THE history of Glasgow is to come alive with a series of major exhibitions at the city's art galleries and museums.
They will feature hundreds of objects, most of which have never been seen before by the public.
Curators hold key to city's top treasuresA TEAM of 28 dedicated curators look after Glasgow's priceless collections. They are experts in a wide range of fields including Medieval and Renaissance art, Old Masters paintings, sculpture and Scottish art as well as glass, pottery and costume. Two curators at the Gallery of Modern Art specialise in modern art and Alison Brown, based at Scotland Street School, is responsible for the collection of Mackintosh furniture and decorative art. Natural history curators look after stuffed animals, skeletons, rocks, fossils, plants and insects while the most diverse collection is looked after by the human history curators. The transport and technology curators are presently busy working on the new Riverside Museum project. Martin Bellamy, head of research for Glasgow Museums, said: "Our curators are the lifeblood of the museum. Without their expert knowledge we would not be able to use and understand the collections in the way that we do." |
But before any can go on display, each has to be researched and conserved by a team of experts from Culture and Sport Glasgow.
The city has around 1.4million items in its collections but only around 3% are on display in the city's galleries and museums at any one time.
The remainder are in storage, but museum boss Mark O'Neill wants to get them out from under the dust sheets and displayed in their full glory.
One of the main exhibitions will be in Kelvingrove to co-incide with the 2014 Commonwealth Games.
Mr O'Neill said: "Before industrialisation, Glasgow was incredibly beautiful - a bit like Cambridge - and we want to show what the city was like before the industrial boom.
"The exhibition will be a mix of archaeology, pottery, paintings, prints and drawings of the city that will really surprise local people.
"We also plan to have a big exhibition about Glasgow at the age of Jane Austen and the Regency period. It will be about costumes and textiles, which were big Glasgow industries.
"We have a couple of 18th century dresses in Kelvingrove and novels from the time that describe what people wore, but the city's amazing costume collection is rarely seen.
"The third exhibition will be about Glasgow from 1860 to 1920, which is the golden age of Glasgow art and design.
"People know about the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, but there was a whole school of very creative people working in the city and we have thousands of things they made that have never been seen.
"These three big exhibitions in Kelvingrove will allow us to get the most important parts of the Glasgow collection researched, conserved and displayed."
The city also has a massive collection of items from the Pacific sent to Glasgow from missionaries and merchants. These will also be put on display.
Another exhibition will feature the museum's collection of stuffed animals.
Mr O'Neill said: "A big part of our collection is natural history, which is one of the great joys of Kelvingrove, so in 2013 we would like to do a big exhibition called Nature's Superheroes And Villains.
Culture and Sport is also talking to Barcelona about the possibility of staging an exhibition of some of Glasgow's many Mackintosh artefacts.
There are also plans to bring items out of storage at the Burrell Collection in Pollok Park.
Mr O'Neill said: "We are working with a museum in Dublin on a Chinese painting exhibition at the Burrell.
"Given how popular the arms and armoury collection is at Kelvingrove, we would also like to do something with the arms and armoury at the Burrell.
"We are also hoping to display a lot of pastels by big names such as Degas, Monet and Renoir, which are so delicate they have not been seen for 20 years.
"The other thing we want to address is Medieval Glasgow. A lot of excavation has been done so we are hoping to do a study of that and in 2011 do an exhibition in St Mungo's about Medieval Glasgow and its orgins.
 This horse sculpture is from the 8th century T'ang Dynasty |  This Chinese embroidered silk banner was made 150 years ago |  This model of the solar system was bought by Glasgow in 1869. |  This peregrine falcon is just one of the city's many natural history artefacts | |
"In six or eight years we will have a collection that is about the city which is studied, researched, conserved and displayed in one museum or another.
"We will then look at how we can make a permanent display of it all so we can tell the story of Glasgow much better than we do now."
Liz Cameron, chairwoman of Culture and Sport Glasgow, said: "Our strategy promises to deliver a wealth of interesting items.
"At the moment we have the Harry Benson exhibition at Kelvingrove and the Colours Of The Silk Road at the Burrell.
"We will continue to offer some of the best exhibitions anywhere in the world drawn from Glasgow's own collection and beyond."
