Since 1901 · Glasgow, fine arts, natural history, design and civic memory

Kelvingrove brings together in one red sandstone palace European paintings, Scottish art, animals, armor, ancient Egypt, Glasgow design and world history.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum opened in Glasgow on May 2, 1901, in the context of the International Exhibition organized that year. Designed by John W. Simpson and EJ Milner Allen, the vast red sandstone building dominates the park Kelvingrove and becomes one of the great civic symbols of the industrial city. The institution does not separate art gallery and encyclopedic museum. Its twenty-two galleries compare painting, sculpture, decorative arts, weapons and armor, archaeology, natural history, ancient Egypt, world cultures and Scottish history. This diversity gives the visitor an experience based on connections rather than a single journey. Scottish art occupies there an essential place, from the Glasgow Boys to Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Glasgow Style. European collections bring together old masters, impressionists and modernity. The Christ of Saint John of the Cross of Salvador Dalí is one of the museum's most famous works. Kelvingrove also preserves popular objects that have become emblematic, such as the naturalized elephant Sir Roger or the Spitfire suspended in the west gallery. After an important renovation, the museum reopened in 2006 with a thematic museography. The paintings chosen here show the richness of its pictorial collection. Van Gogh paints the Scottish merchant Alexander Reid with almost fraternal intensity. Rembrandt transforms Tobias and the Angel into a small luminous episode lost in a vast landscape, then gives the Man in Armor a theatrical presence. Matisse finally makes oriental dress a decorative field where figure and motif compete. The story the museum's current also includes a rereading of empire, slavery and colonial conditions of acquisition. The "Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum" selection notably compares Portrait of Alexander Reid and Tobie and the Angel in a landscape. His reading favors drawing.

Kelvingrove functions like a miniature city: art, science, industry, nature and history share the same civic space.