Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Park

Yesterday, when I looked at the weather forecast for today it predicted rain all day. I checked it again this morning, and it said the rain wouldn’t start until at least noon.

I glanced out my hotel window. It didn’t appear to be raining then, but the sky bore a countenance that said, “No rain until noon? Ha! We’ll see about that, old man! I bet I can come up with some showers or maybe even a downpour to drench you and make you miserable before then.”

If the sky didn’t actually say that, I’m sure it was thinking it. So I decided to stick with a rainy day activity for the morning. The one I chose is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The reasons for deciding on that institution were manifold, including:

• It’s large, so I could spend a lot of rainy-day time there.
• The collection is extremely eclectic, so I couldn’t help but find some exhibits of interest.
• The architecture of the old building that houses the art gallery and museum is attractive inside and out.
• It’s situated in a beautiful, big park, Kelvingrove Park. I figured that if the rain held off, I could go for a stroll in the park before sheltering in the building.
• It’s free.

You might wonder how I knew all of the above before going there. Did I read it in one or more guidebooks? Nae, nae, dear reader. I visited Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum during my visit to Glasgow five years ago. The information above came from my memory and, primarily, a scan of my journal entry that included that visit to Kelvingrove.

(Back in the early days of this journal, I wrote only one entry per day rather than writing separate morning and afternoon posts as I do now when I experience a full day of activities. Thus, if you visit that earlier entry, you’ll find a lot more than just Kelvingrove in it.)

When I left my hotel, it wasn’t raining. That’s fortunate because I had a walk of a little over a half-hour walk ahead of me.

The dryness ended after a few minutes, followed by a light drizzle, from which my rain jacket and umbrella valiantly protected me. Yes, I know that drizzles are by definition always light, but “drizzle” covers a spectrum. I don’t want anyone to get the impression that today’s drizzle was on the upper end of that range and bordering on showers or rain. The drizzle might be insulted by that. Then again, rain looks at drizzle and dismisses it haughtily as wimpy. Precipitation can be so cruel.

By the time I got close to Kelvingrove Park, the drizzle ceased, probably because it was afraid that it would be bullied by an oncoming rain. Now dry, I decided to risk it and go for a walk in the park.

Kelvingrove Park

Kelvingrove Park is every bit as lovely as I remember it. It’s big and lushly green with lots of paths through it.

Several statues, including at least one that’s a fountain when it’s running, are scattered throughout the park. One of the non-fountain statues is of Lord Kelvin, also known as William Thomson. He was the first Baron Kelvin. In addition to being a baron, he was a mathematician, physicist, and engineer. The Kelvin temperature scale is named for him.

When I was there five years ago, a big red traffic cone sat atop the head of Lord Kelvin’s statue like a dunce cap. There’s a picture of it in the earlier post. I’m pleased to say that Lord Kelvin smartened up since then and he was not wearing the cone of shame today.

There is also a river that runs through Kelvingrove Park, River Kelvin, of course.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove Park, River Kelvin, a Kelvin statue, and the Kelvin temperature scale. Sheesh. That’s an awful lot of adulation for a guy who is most widely known for absolute zero. (I assume everyone knows, but in case not, Lord Kelvin was the first person to quite accurately approximate absolute zero, the coldest temperature possible. The Kelvin scale is designed such that absolute zero is zero on it.)

Because of the threatening rain, I didn’t cover the expanse of Kelvingrove Park, nevertheless, I strolled along paths by lots of trees, grass, statues, and the river. It’s a beautiful, calming place to spend some time.

My only complaint about Kelvingrove Park is that today, September 14, the leaves on a couple of trees had almost all completed the changing of the colours ceremony. And a few other trees were getting started. Still not the middle of September, not even officially autumn yet, I don’t want to be reminded this early about the coming of the season of which we shall not speak.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

As I mentioned above, I visited Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum when I was here five years ago, I said in my journal entry about it that it would be easier to name the sorts of objects that aren’t in it than those that are. That was, of course, an exaggeration, but only a slight one.

It’s one of the more eclectic, maybe the most eclectic, cultural institutions I’ve been to. Consequently, if you can’t find anything in Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum that interests you in the least, you should check your pulse. Better yet, have someone else check your heart rate for you because it’s hard to check for a pulse when you don’t have one.

Seriously. Here, in no particular order, are just some of what’s in there:

• An Ancient Egypt collection.
• A design gallery featuring furniture, clothing, tableware, and an old car, among other things.
• Bronze Age artifacts.
• A display of armour and weapons.
• A stained glass window from an old chapel.
• A small display about the Holocaust
• Another small display about slavery and abolition.
• Yet another small exhibit about British colonial times.
• A collection of taxidermy and models of animals and animal skeletons from around the world and across the ages.
• A room with images and artifacts related to various indigenous cultures around the world. 
• An art collection, including:
  • Paintings and sculptures. They have a substantial Scottish collection, but artists from other countries are also represented. For example, I spotted a painting by Paul Cèzanne. And there’s a whole room containing paintings by a variety of Dutch painters.
  • There’s also a room with recent photography, but that might have been a temporary exhibit.
  • The prized possession of the art collection is “Christ of St John of the Cross,” a 1951 painting by Salvador Dali. Considering that it was Dali, I was shocked to see there wasn’t a melting clock draped on Christ’s shoulder.
    
    Beside the room containing Christ of St. John of the Cross, a 10-minute video played on a continuous loop discussing the damage that was done to the painting through an act of vandalism and the repair and restoration of the painting after that damage. Despite being shown it in the video, looking at the painting, I couldn’t detect where the damage—large slashes—had been.
• Oh, yes. I almost forgot. There is also Saint Elvis. It’s a kitschy statue of Elvis Presley with a neon halo around his head. What combined art gallery and museum is complete without a Saint Elvis? Although, I don’t know if that was a permanent or temporary exhibit. I didn’t mention Saint Elvis in my journal entry from five years ago. I don’t imagine I would have omitted it if I saw it. And it’s hard to miss.

I took some notes at the Kelvingrove so I could provide the above inventory here. But I forgot to take notes about everything I saw and I’ve since forgotten everything I didn’t take notes on. There is so much more to the Kelvingrove’s eclecticness.

As I mentioned above, the architecture of the building is a joy inside and out. From the outside, it’s a large, stately yet ornate, red stone building. Inside there are three grand atriums amid the exhibit halls. An impressive old organ sits on the upper level of the two main exhibit floors, looking down on one of the atriums. And there’s lots of stone and dark wood throughout to give the interior a rich feel.

When I left the Kelvingrove Museum and Art Gallery, there was still no precipitation, but the sidewalk showed some evidence of recent rain. I was pleased with the lack of precipitation because I had a long walk to the first activity that I had planned and already booked for this afternoon.

As I walked there, I did experience brief periods of mist, but it was so fine that an insensitive drizzle would have bullied it for its feebleness.

Now that I’ve foreshadowed an activity for this afternoon, this is a good place to end this post. As they say, stay tuned.