Kelvingrove Bites
Enjoy a specially curated talk about the history and context of a new object(s) from Kelvingrove Art Gallery & Museum, delivered by Curators, Gallery Assistants, Volunteer Guides and more!
About Kelvingrove Bites
Friday 21st February: Patricia Cronin, 'Memorial to a Marriage'
For LGBT History Month we are focusing on the collection work - 'Memorial to a Marriage'. This bronze sculpture, cast by American artist, Patricia Cronin, in 2004, shows Cronin, lying in bed, embraced in the arms of her partner, and fellow artist, Deborah Kass.
'Memorial to a Marriage' was first shown by Glasgow Life Museums in 2009 as part of the exhibition ‘sh[OUT]: Contemporary art and human rights’ and acquired for the collection in the following year.
Join Katie Bruce, one of the curators involved in the 2009 programme at GoMA and the journey of the sculpture into Glasgow Life Museums’ collection.
'Memorial to a Marriage' was made when same-sex marriage was illegal in the United States of America. The only way in which Cronin’s and Kass’s relationship could be legally recognised was though documents such as wills or health care provisions that would only be enacted if either Kass or Cronin died. As it was only in death that their relationship could be ‘recognised’ in law, Cronin decided to create the sculpture for her personal burial plot in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx (New York) - a funerary ‘memorial’ to her relationship with Kass. The original marble sculpture was installed at Woodlawn Cemetery in 2002.
On 24th July 2011, same-sex marriage was legalised in the state of New York, and Cronin and Kass married on this same day. A bronze version replaced the marble original in September of that year to protect the marble sculpture from air pollution. The version owned by Glasgow Museums was cast by Cronin from the original marble sculpture but at a smaller two third.
Free 20 min talk. No need to book. Please meet at the info desk in the main hall 5 mins before.
Friday 28th February: Alasdair Gray: Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifities - conserving his 'best big oil painting' for the city
For Gray Day 2025 we are focussing on ‘Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties’ (1964) by Alasdair Gray. 'Cowcaddens' as it is affectionately known, is a stunning example of his work with Gray noting it as ‘my best big oil painting’ and was acquired for Glasgow Museums’ collection in 2023. Before it went on display in Kelvingrove the painting underwent some conservation treatment which revealed materials Gray used (spoiler alert: not just oil paint!) and an insight into his working practice.
Join Glasgow Museums’ Conservator Hazel Neil and Producer|Curator Katie Bruce to find out more about what we have learned and a discussion about Alasdair Gray’s art making practice.
‘Cowcaddens Streetscape in the Fifties’ captures an area of Glasgow where the landscape and community would alter radically in the post-war Comprehensive Development Area programme and conveys the look, rhythm and feel of daily life in Cowcaddens as well as a sense of change.
Alasdair Gray was born in Riddrie in the east of Glasgow in 1934 and attended The Glasgow School of Art in the mid-1950s. From this time onwards Gray was a prolific poet, playwright, novelist, painter and printmaker. His work was and continues to be celebrated in books, exhibitions, events and most recently the adaptation of ‘Poor things’ @poorthingsfilm. He was renowned for his use of Glasgow for inspiration, while moulding it into a place of his imagination, in both his writing and artwork.
In ‘Alasdair Gray – A Life in Pictures’ - Gray wrote: “This was painted seven years after leaving Glasgow School of Art, but derives from many sketches I made when a student of mural painting there. The single most exciting work of art I knew was the canal across central Scotland from the Clyde to the Forth, with a branch that passed near my Riddrie home on the way to the Lanarkshire coalfields…The canal excited me as the ruins of ancient Rome excited Piranesi, but I could not put the six miles I wanted to commemorate in a single picture. This oil painting shows a fragment of what I intended.”
Free 20 min talk. No need to book. Please meet at the info desk in the main hall 5 mins before
Friday 14th March: Mars rising in sagittarius: something rather unexpected on a 16th-century crossbow device
Join Curator of European Arms and Armour Ralph Moffat for a closer look at an intriguing object on display in Kelvingrove.
Free 20 min talk. No need to book. Please meet at the info desk in the main hall 5 mins before.
Friday 11th April: The Glasgow Style and the 'New Woman' - Frances Macdonald's 'Honesty' mirror
Frances Macdonald's 'Honesty' mirror is a pivotal work in the international recognition of the Glasgow art nouveau movement now known as 'The Glasgow Style'. Published in 1897, in The Studio magazine's 'Some Glasgow Designers, Part 1' feature - profiling the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Macdonald sisters - Frances's work shocked on many levels.
Join European Decorative Art and Design Curator Alison Brown, to learn more about the story behind the mirror: its design, context, production, symbolism, radicalism and reception. You'll discover how Frances' early metalwork was an important point in the early work of 'The Four' and the development of the Glasgow Style, and how despite some critics derogatorily drubbing such work as being the product of the 'Spooky School' and the 'New Woman', the design composition of 'Honesty' became a favourite format for her contemporaries to follow.
Free 10 min talk. No need to book. Please meet at the info desk in the main hall 5 mins before.
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