ITP 2012: Day 2 – Rajeshwari Shah

I am joined in Glasgow by two other participants Marwa Adbel Razek Mahmoud Bdreldin from Egypt and Ren Zhuo from China. We each gave our introductory presentations and then Martin Bellamy from the Kelvingrove Museum gave his presentation introducing us to the Glasgow Museums.  

We were given a tour of the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. The very famous Surrealist artist Salvador Dali painting’s- Christ of Saint John of the Cross is housed here. Glasgow deserves a visit just to see this painting. It’s absolutely moving!

We then visited the Glasgow Museum and Resource Centre which stores objects owned by the different Glasgow Museums. There are 17 storage rooms which house objects ranging from Art to Natural History and Transport.

Harry Dunlop gave us a tour of the facility. He explained that this possibly is the only facility that allows adults and children into storage to see art objects and not just scholars. They allow groups of 15 at one time. Activities are conducted with actual art objects in storage. They showed us an example of this in the Arms and Armour storage room. They have replicas for you to get a sense of the objects. Ren Zhou tried on the Armour!!      

We briefly saw the database of the Museums which was especially interesting for Marwa who is a Registrar in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo. We then saw some of the kits used for the Open Museum a great concept particular to Glasgow Museums. 

Finally, we met conservators from different departments – Paper, Paintings, Object and Frames- they all introduced us to their work.  It’s been a wonderful first two days in Glasgow. I’m hoping the weather holds up!!

Rajeshwari Shah     

India