Glasgow Museums Resource Centre houses storage and conservation for all of Glasgow Life’s museums including Kelvingrove, the Burrell Collection, Riverside Museum, GOMA, St Mungo’s and Provands Lordship Museum, storing around 1.4 million objects in 17 storage pods organised by object type and material.
The facility is open to the public and also serves as the base for Glasgow Life’s pioneering Open Museum handling kit loan service and travelling displays. The tours offered will give participants a chance to meet with object specialist conservators based at GMRC, visit their labs and learn about how they care for the city’s rich and diverse collection.
As part of the tour, we will focus on Natural History, Frames and Furniture and Preventive Conservation and Collections Care, and you will be split into smaller groups while exploring our collections.
Natural History
The natural history collection at Glasgow Life is one of the largest of its type owned by a local authority in the UK. The natural history conservator is specialised in taxidermy preparation and conservation and will discuss how they prepare and maintain collections for both display and for research. They also oversee storage of specimens in storage pods dedicated to taxidermy, osteological collections, geology, entomology and botany and play a key role in pest management and control for the whole collection.
Frames and Furniture
The furniture collection at Glasgow life includes highlights such as the early furniture of the Burrell Collection and key pieces from the Glasgow Style including Charles Rennie Mackintosh. At GMRC furniture and frames conservators share a dedicated studio for the treatment of wooden objects and frames from the art and design collections. Frame conservation combines ancient and modern techniques and allows the museums to showcase a fine art collection that spans centuries. This speciality also serves as a way to preserve the tangible heritage of frames and their construction. The frames and furniture studio will present the tools and skills of their speciality and discuss how they approach conservation from a practical and ethical standpoint.
Preventive Conservation and Collections Care
The team at Glasgow Life brings together specialist conservators from many different disciplines and backgrounds to care for a collection that is spread over venues ranging from the oldest house in Glasgow to purpose built architectural visions. Preventive care is co-ordinated by the preventive conservator with input and advice from the object specialists. This tour will present the way in which Glasgow Life cares for the city collection and supports the individual venues to provide access and enjoyment of the collection to the local community and visitors from further afield. The tour will allow for discussion of the storage facility and how it functions plus the way in which conservation responds to the challenges of the individual venues.
