When was the burrell collection built

By , he was a respected collector in the fields of late Gothic and early Renaissance European art, including magnificent tapestries and stained glass and late 19th century French art, including more than 20 works by Edgar Degas. He was one of the largest donors of artworks to the Glasgow International Exhibition, the legacy of which is the much-loved Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

Sir William believed in free education for all and wanted the people of the city to be able to access his fine collection. In , together with his wife Constance, he generously gifted the Collection to the City of Glasgow. A staggering 9, objects form The Burrell Collection. Highlights include one of the most significant holdings of Chinese art in the UK, medieval treasures including stained glass, arms and armour and over tapestries which rank amongst the finest in the world, and paintings by renowned French artists including Manet, Cezanne and Degas.

After many years of searching for a suitable site, the opening of the museum in Pollok Country Park in was received with much critical and public acclaim. It leads to an atrium like a Victorian sculpture court. Structurally this is clearly of the late 20th century, as is the rest of the building in form and style. The spatial sequences throughout are a delight and the collection captivating.

Circulation is focused around the building envelope, with cross-corridors for orientation and access to areas where conservation requires low light. You walk through them, their history alive. When the building opened it was widely praised and quickly became popular.

In it was Category A-listed by Historic Environment Scotland as being of national and international importance. It still seems contemporary, free of stylistic polemics.

It is not expected to reopen until Spatial interventions will allow more of the collection to be shown than the 20 per cent displayed at any one time previously, and accommodate 21st-century interpretation of it.

In April this year, conceptual plans were given a green light by Glasgow City Council. These propose re-landscaping the approach to the building, inserting a new entrance at the end of a promenade bypassing the original foyer, a new and larger gallery shop and a complete redisplay of the collection.

The redisplay seems inevitable, in response to shifting curatorial preferences and marketing priorities. Public expectations have changed since the building opened. The most intrusive intervention is a wide staircase for the crowds of visitors Glasgow Life anticipates, to be implanted to access exhibition space in the former storage zone on the lower ground floor. Creating a context for the larger architectural artifacts in the collection was also influential in ordering the scale and materials of the building and in forming its character.

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Past Events. Frequently Asked Questions. Tutors All. Surrounding three sides of the courtyard are enclosed rooms. These are faithful reconstructions of the dining room, hall and drawing room of Sir William Burrell's home, Hutton Castle, near Berwick-upon-Tweed, fully furnished as they would have been in the s. There is a sense in which the rest of the gallery is designed and built around these three rooms, and it is certainly within them that you feel closest to the lifestyle of the man behind the collection.

Perhaps the highlight of a tour around the Burrell Collection is the mezzanine area which is home to Sir William's collection of paintings. The paintings themselves form only a small part of the overall collection, but, especially for fans of the French impressionists, they are a "must see" part of it. But a visit to the mezzanine floor is also fascinating for the different perspective it gives on many of the ground floor galleries.

Some art critics have been a little sniffy about Sir William Burrell's collecting choices, and the real merit of some of the 8, items he collected. But in any matter of taste, it is unlikely that a collection formed by an individual will ever appeal to everyone. Perhaps the best summary of what the Burrell Collection represents is given in the introduction to the official guidebook, where John Julius Norwich comments: " So who was Sir William Burrell?

Born in Glasgow in , he joined the family business of Clyde-based shipowners and shipping agents in , and ten years later took over control of the business with his older brother, George.

In an entrepreneurial age, he showed a degree of business acumen that put many of his contemporaries to shame. In , Scottish shipbuilding and shipping was going through a cyclic depression, and most of Burrell's competitors were trying to cut their costs and trim their businesses. William Burrell's response was to order twelve new ships for his fleet, at a time when demand was so poor that Clyde shipyards were offering giveaway prices just to stay in work.

By the time these were built, the economic cycle had revolved and within a short time Burrell had sold every ship in his fleet, all at huge profits, and gone into semi-retirement: all before he was A decade later, Burrell returned from retirement to repeat the trick, only on a larger scale. He ordered 20 ships in when prices were once more very low, and eight more in