Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery

The University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery is the oldest public museum in Scotland. It is located in various buildings on the main campus of the University in the west end of Glasgow, Scotland.

The history of the museum

The museum first opened in 1807, in a specially constructed building off the High Street, adjoining the original campus of the University. When the University moved west to its new site at Gilmorehill (to escape crowding and pollution in the city centre) the museum moved too.

Related Topics:
1807 - Gilmorehill

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The money to build the museum, and the core of its original collections, came from the bequest of the Scottish anatomist and scientist William Hunter, who died in London in 1783. As well as his medical collections, which arose from his own work, Hunter collected very widely, often assisted by his many royal and aristocratic patrons. He and his agents scoured Europe for coins, minerals, paintings and prints, ethnographic materials, books and manuscripts, as well as insects and other biological specimens. Hunter's eclectic bequest forms the core of the collections, but since Hunter's death, they have grown considerably, and now include some of the most important collections of work by artists such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and James McNeill Whistler, as well as superb geological, zoological, anatomical, archaeological, ethnographic and scientific instrument collections.

Related Topics:
Anatomist - William Hunter - London - 1783 - Charles Rennie Mackintosh - James McNeill Whistler

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