The City of Glasgow's museum and art gallery at Kelvingrove (by the banks of the river Kelvin and facing the imposing University of Glasgow buildings on the other side) was officially opened in 1901. It had been built following a design competition and was launched with a major international exhibition in the surrounding parkland. The side facing the main road outside is actually the rear of the building, as it was designed to have its frontage facing the river.
The building is a typical product of the Victorian age (as are many of Glasgow's fine buildings) with ornate, red stonework on the outside and twenty display galleries and two side courts grouped round an impressive central court. If you are lucky, you can hear a recital from the massive organ there.
The exhibition halls concentrate on Natural History/Zoology (with some fine displays of animals in natural settings), Archaeology (examples of Celtic and Roman finds from the west of Scotland), History (with a magnificent collection of arms and armour, presented by the chairman of Scott Shipbuilders on Clydeside) and Fine Arts (paintings by Rembrandt, Picasso, Monet, Van Gogh). One of the gallery's most famous paintings, Salvador Dali's "Christ of St John of the Cross" is now displayed in the St Mungo Museum of Religious Life, beside Glasgow Cathedral.
The museum displays Milanese field armour (purchased in 1938 from the American newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst) and Greenwich field armour (pictured here) for man and horse from the 16th century (the only example of its kind to survive).
One of the galleries is devoted to the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh, with examples of the furniture he designed for Miss Cranston's Tea Rooms in Glasgow. If you are a fan of Mackintosh you can cross the river to the Hunterian Museum, (the oldest public museum in Scotland) in Glasgow University, where there is a gallery with more than 80 pieces of his furniture.
