Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum

After leaving Perth at the end of our (last, for this trip!) house sit, we headed by train to Glasgow for a couple nights to catch our breath and repack for our plane flight.

While here, we headed over to Kelvingrove. This is a park located along the Kelvin river. One side borders the University of Glasgow. This is the place where William Thompson, Lord Kelvin worked most of his life and the river provided the name of his Baronetcy.



In the park is the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. Construction began in 1888 and it open in 1901. After a closure for renovation, it reopened in 2006. And a fine place it is.

It houses interesting minor pieces of art.

One of the interesting bits was this room-sized orrery in its own little glass and wood enclosure.

The main hall has the look of a cross between a train station and the Museum of Natural History in London. You'll notice seating in the lower left. This is for a coffee shop we'll visit below.

One of the side halls has this curious display hanging overhead.

Among the statues on display is this one showing the classical triangular symmetry with the winning subjects of mother and child.

But the main hall is clearly a winning location in this Victorian building.

There is an room of ancient Egyptian artifacts. I found this one to be fascinating. The combination of what seems to be humans and gods (or at least people dressed like Anubis) in such a matter of fact way make this feel like a perfectly normal thing to have happen.

This depiction of Horus is quite well done.

I can't tell what is happening in this engraving. Perhaps if I could read hieroglyphs it would help. These sorts of things are a bit like ancient comic books. There is always a text telling you what the pictures are showing. Too bad I can't read it.

What make the main hallway fun is that over the front door is a large pipe organ. So arranged to get the coffee shop early to get a seat at a table so we could enjoy our coffee and tea during the concert.

Here's a little snip of the concert. As you can hear, this is not a serious I'm-going-to-play-some-heavy-music-for-you kind of concert. It is just light-hearted music played for fun.