The museum building housing the Burrell Collection, with the entrance wing in the background to the left, and the glazed restaurant on the right looking onto the lawn.

The Burrell Collection is an art collection in the city of Glasgow, in Scotland. Glasgow (ˈglæzgoʊ is the largest city in Scotland and third most populous in the United Kingdom Scotland ( Gaelic: Alba) is a Country in northwest Europethat occupies the northern third of the island of Great Britain. It is situated in Pollok Country Park on the south side of the city. Pollok Country Park is a large country Park located in Pollok, south Glasgow.

The collection was put together over many years by Sir William Burrell, a wealthy industrialist, ship owner and art collector who then gifted it to the city of Glasgow in 1944. Sir William Burrell ( July 9 1861 - March 29 1958) was a Glaswegian shipping merchant and Philanthropist. ^[1] The gift was made on the condition that the collection was to be housed in a building 16 miles (26 km) from the centre of Glasgow, to show the works to their greatest advantage, and to avoid the damaging effects of air pollution at the time. The trustees spent over 20 years trying to find a suitable 'home' for the collection, one which met all the criteria set out in the Trust Deed, without success. Eventually, when The Pollok Estate was gifted to the city in 1967, the Trustees had certain terms of the deed waived, which allowed the current site, 3 miles (5 km) from the city centre and within the city boundaries, to be chosen for the collection. ^[2]

A competition for design of the museum building in 1971 was delayed by a postal strike, allowing time for the winning architect Barry Gasson to complete his entry, designed in collaboration with Brit Andresen. The building is L-shaped in plan and is designed to house and display the diverse collection, with elements of the collection such as Romanesque doorways built into the structure, at the same time giving views out into the park over formal grassed areas to the south, and into adjacent woodland to the north. The entrance through a 16th century stone archway built into a modern red sandstone gable leads by a shop and other facilities to a central courtyard under the glazed roof, adjacent to the reconstructions of three rooms from the Burrell's home from 1927, Hutton Castle near Berwick-on-Tweed, showing the wood panelled drawing room, hall, and dining room with their furnishings. Berwick-upon-Tweed ( ˈbɛrɪk- ( Scots: Berwick or historically South Berwick) situated in the county of Northumberland, is the northernmost Galleries on two levels house the various artefacts, over a basement storage level, and at the lower level a restaurant gives views to the lawn to the south. ^[1] The museum was opened by the Queen in 1983, and was named as Scotland's second greatest post-war building (after Gillespie, Kidd & Coia's St. In 2005 the Scottish Architecture magazine ''Prospect'' published a list of the 100 best modern Scottish buildings, as voted for by its readers Gillespie Kidd & Coia were a Scottish architectural firm famous for their application of Modernism in churches and universities as well as at Peter's Seminary) in a poll of architects by Prospect magazine in 2005. Not to be confused with Prospect (magazine, which specialises in current affairs Prospect is a quarterly Architecture Magazine

The Burrell contains an important collection of medieval art including stained glass and tapestries, oak furniture, medieval weapons and armour, Islamic art, artefacts from ancient Egypt and China, Impressionist works by Degas and Cezanne, modern sculpture and a whole host of other artefacts from around the world, all collected by one man. Impressionism was a 19th-century Art movement that began as a loose association of Paris -based Artists exhibiting their art publicly in the 1860s ^[2]

References

Glasgow Art Galleries and Museums (edit) Art Galleries: Gallery of Modern Art | Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum | Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery | Burrell Collection | McLellan Galleries | Pollok House Museums: Glasgow Museum of Transport | Glasgow Science Centre | St Mungo Museum of Religious Life and Art | People's Palace | Provand's Lordship | Scotland Street School Museum | Scottish Football Museum | The Lighthouse Planned: Riverside Museum