Posts Tagged ‘Riverside Museum’
Tall Ship Glenlee moves to new home by Riverside Museum
The Tall Ship Glenlee today moved downriver to her new berth at Glasgow’s new Riverside Museum. Three tugs moved Glenlee out from her former home at Yorkhill Quay this morning. After years of planning and preparation, it’s wonderful to finally see The Tall Ship and the Riverside Museum together!
Patricia Cain brings Riverside artworks to Kelvingrove
Copyright: Patricia Cain
Artworks detailing the construction of the Zaha Hadid-designed Riverside Museum are currently on display at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.
Drawing (on) Riverside is an exhibition by Patricia Cain which features 100 works, many of them new, and runs until August 14.
Drawing (on) Riverside is a powerful body of work from an award-winning artist who explores the development of the £74million museum in drawing, painting and sculpture highlighting the different phases of construction.
Patricia Cain has become a familiar figure on the site of Glasgow’s new transport museum and her work based on the project has already won the prestigious Threadneedle Prize and the Aspect Prize.
Councillor George Redmond, Chair of Glasgow Life said: “Anyone who sees the works Patricia Cain has been creating that are based on Riverside will be astonished by her unique vision and the detail she has captured of Britain’s most exciting museum project. This exhibition not only showcases Patricia’s incredible talent, it also affords visitors an insight to the various stages that have brought this iconic building to life.”
Patricia Cain said: “Watching the Clyde landscape changing has had a major influence on my art practice for the last 10 years and as part of this, I’ve been observing and recording the construction of the new Riverside Museum. I’ve made this process the focus for this exhibition by trying to expose aspects of this through both solo work, and collaborations with Ann Nisbet, Alec Galloway, Rosalind Lawless and Phil Lavery that mirror the working on-site collaborations that occurred.”
The exhibition has been generously sponsored by Clydebank Rebuilt, Varla, Paterson Timber, The Ballast Trust, Glass and Mirror, Optium Acrylic, The GalGael Trust, Independent Glass, The Norma Frame Foundation, The Bet Low Trust (amongst others) and Ferguson Shipbuilders and AD Associates who have leveraged match funding from Arts & Business Scotland.
Katriona Holmes, Investments Manager at Arts & Business said: “It is great to see local businesses involved in the staging of such a significant exhibition, and A&B Scotland is pleased to support these partnerships under the New Arts Sponsorship scheme. This funding has been made available by the Scottish Government to encourage business investment in the arts. The grants match-fund a sponsorship, doubling the associated sponsorship benefits for the business.”
The exhibition runs until 14 August 2011. Entry to the exhibition is free.
Riverside Museum and The Tall Ship open to the public on June 21 2011. To donate to the Riverside Museum Appeal, please visit www.riversideappeal.org
Two articles on Glasgow’s Riverside Museum
It’s great to see Glasgow’s Riverside Museum garnering attention from media all over the world.
Here’s an article on the project in Italian design magazine Abitare. And here’s another article, from a very different perspective, in the Journal of Victorian Culture Online.
Clyde Cruises reveals details of Govan Ferry crossing
One of the best ways to get to the Riverside Museum will be by ferry. Walk, bus or get the subway to Govan’s historic Water Row and take the MV Fencer for the short trip across the Clyde.
Here’s the timetable.
The service will run 7 days a week, 360 days a year
- Monday – first service departs – 1000
- Tuesday – first service departs – 1000
- Wednesday – first service departs – 1000
- Thursday – first service departs – 1000
- Friday – first service departs – 1100
- Saturday – first service departs – 1000
- Sunday – first service departs – 1100
Services will run approximately every 20 minutes and the last departure from the Riverside Museum is 1705 each evening.
Visit the Clyde Cruises website for more details.
Museum drama brings Glasgow’s wartime subway to life
Copyright: Culture & Sport Glasgow (Museums)
More than 50 volunteers and professional actors donned 1940s costumes to star in an innovative short film that will be broadcast on an antique subway train inside the new Riverside Museum.
The 28-minute period drama is set on the 1930s subway car, a well-known feature of the old Museum of Transport at Kelvin Hall, and part of Glasgow Museums’ collection. Visitors to Riverside Museum will be able to board the subway and watch the performance, which will be back-projected onto the end of the train.
During the drama, the 17 actors and 36 extras board and alight at various “stations” on the route. One of these stations included Merkland Street Station, which was bombed in 1940 and re-opened the following year. The drama is set a few weeks after the station re-opened with travellers still anxious about the risks of attack. Despite the fears, Glasgow’s subway was regarded as a safe way to travel during the Second World War, and by 1945 more than 34 million people were travelling on it.
Joseph Briffa, Head of Film and Video at 55degrees, the multi-media production company that made the film, said the production was one of the most ambitious and challenging shoots they’d ever worked on. He said, “We had some 60 actors entering and leaving the subway carriage at very specific timings based on a real-time circuit of the subway in 1941, all in single 30-minute long takes. If there was the slightest mistake we had to re-set and return to the beginning. The technical challenge of this was extreme to say the least, and the level of concentration by everyone on set to make this happen was incredible.”
As well as the challenges of filming, production staff also had to ensure that the cast of 17 actors and 36 extras all boarded and left the train at exactly the right moment in the script. While aboard, the “travellers” had to sway as if they were standing on a moving train.
Kirsty Devine, Senior Curator at Riverside Museum, added “It was important we got the look perfect. We had to make sure the costumes, make-up, hairstyle and dialogue were all authentic. It was a fun and extraordinary couple of days. Everyone was fantastic, and it was lovely to see such enthusiasm for the new museum. By the time of the final shoot, however, wartime fatigue was definitely starting to show!”
Gavin McLellan, Director of the Riverside Museum Appeal, said “This filming is another example of the public support for the new Riverside Museum, with so many people giving up their whole weekend to feature in this film. There’s still time for members of the public to become part of the new museum. A donation to the Riverside Museum Appeal will ensure that your name or that of someone you love will be a permanent presence inside the museum, just like those who starred in this innovative wartime drama. And despite the difficult financial circumstances, we’ve raised about £4million and have £1million to go – a terrific achievement.”
To donate online, please visit www.riversideappeal.org or text the word ‘Riverside’ and your name to 70700 to give £5.
A Riverside slideshow: some of Iona Shepherd’s finest photographs
Iona Shepherd’s wonderful photographs have been a regular feature on the Riverside Museum blog since it launched in the spring last year. As well as providing a regular Photograph of the Week, Iona’s other posts include slideshows of the work carried out by the project team, from the conservation and decant of the ship models to the 3007’s epic journey from GMRC to Riverside. Today’s Iona’s last day with the project; she’ll be sorely missed. Below’s a selection of some of the photographs she’s taken for the Riverside project.
Glasgow’s Queens prepare for final voyage to Riverside
The three largest ship models in Glasgow Museums’ collection – the Queen Mary, the Queen Elizabeth and the QE2 – are preparing to make their final voyage. In the next few weeks, they’ll make the last leg of their epic journey from the Clyde Room at the Museum of Transport to the new Riverside Museum.
Like all of the ship models in the collection, these three ships are incredibly fragile. Unlike the others, however, they are huge! These are hefty models that weigh up to 258kgs each, and took a team of six people to carefully move them out from their display case in the Clyde Room and onto maneuverable skates.
Specialist contractors from Constantine carefully lifted them into custom-built wooden crates using fabric straps. The models were then covered in protective sheeting, the crates built up around them, and the interiors filled with packing to prevent the models moving. Soon they’ll be forklifted down into the main hall then loaded onto a lorry and taken to the Riverside Museum.
Revealed: Robbie Coltrane’s Riverside bloopers
Last week came the news that actor Robbie Coltrane had donated one of his treasured cars to the Riverside Museum. Colrane’s Chrysler Jeep will take pride of place in the north window of the Zaha Hadid-designed museum, and will be one of the first objects that most visitors see.
Coltrane, who is a Trustee of the Riverside Museum Appeal, also starred in a series of bloopers, aided and abetted by Chewin’ the Fat and Still Game star Greg Hemphill, to help promote Riverside’s £5million appeal. In the cheeky YouTube vids, which you can watch below, Coltrane loses it with his producer; is humbled by a modern irritation; and, err, makes an embarrassing discovery about just how windy the Riverside site can be …
The Riverside Museum Appeal has now raised £4million, and in these last few months of the project it’s making a final push to reach its £5million target. Please help by donating online at www.riversideappeal.org or, to make a £5 donation, text “Riverside” to 70700. All donations will be permanently recognised in the new museum.
Round-up of the install at Glasgow’s Riverside Museum
Since the New Year things have been moving pretty fast down on the Riverside Museum site. It’s full steam ahead with locomotives and their tenders being eased into place. All the buses and trams are on site too, ready to be positioned into their final display location.
Last week we transported the fire engines down to the Pointhouse site. This week the exhibition install teams started building the display units around them and some of the other large objects.
The re-created street, which promises to deliver more than the old Museum of Transport’s well-loved Kelvin Street, has seen the majority of its objects going into the shop units. Many of the bicycles have also arrived on site and been lifted into their dramatic setting. The Faslane caravan, for years a fixed presence at the Faslane Peace Camp, has also been installed at the Riverside Museum; its contents carefully conserved and returned to their original spot, just as former resident and peace protester Disco Dave left them.
Outside, the plaza has been surfaced, trees planted, and work’s started on the car park. And only a few days ago, a dredger vessel sailed into the area to begin dredging the Kelvin Harbour.
Riverside Museum 
