Down by the riverside
(The new Riverside Museum: Glasgow, Scotland)
Online social media really worked out for me today; firstly, I noted on Twitter (of all things) that today was the official opening day of the new Riverside museum. It has been some time in the building and is taking over from the old, rather tired Transport museum just tucked behind the Kelvin Hall. I had spent many a happy hour there, however – the quality of the collection spoke for itself, despite a rather faded atmosphere. Knowing that this afternoon is the only (potentially) free one of my entire week, I decided to grasp this opportunity firmly, putting out messages on both Twitter and Facebook (I know…) asking f anyone might be interested in accompanying me for an afternoon excursion. I managed to receive one positive reply from each and was accompanied by friends Nils and Tom for the driech and damp trudge towards the river.
First impressions were that although the building is fresh and new, no route to it is as well finished. We walked through an extended building site, but perhaps we should have done the right thing and opted for public transport. It was smaller than I had anticipated – one of the major factors at play is that the entire space can only be viewed from the air, and therefore couldn’t be seen. Practically all the published images are taken from the air – a baffling realization since we will never see it from that angle. It even appears so on the tourism posters around the city – not a helpful hint. The museum seemed small from outside, but the space inside soon put paid to that notion. This initial sense of small scale faded over time as we realised we had missed whole swathes of the ground floor when we viewed it from the first floor. Luckily, the place is crammed with practically all my old favourites from the Transport museum; the horse drawn hearse, the ambulance, fire engine, trams, the oldest bicycle in the world. They even extended the old Glasgow street that was a firm favourite with everybody – news shops and exhibits line the roadway, along with their vehicles.
One particularly odd omission is the spitfire that greeted every visitor to the old museum. In fact, there was not a single aeroplane in the entire museum – one flying machine – but no planes. This is a major disappointment as I like to see a spitfire almost as much as I adore seeing a red arrow. They are my favourite aeroplanes of all time. Nothing. Not a single one. The other glaring oversight was the hand painted wooden traveler caravan. Where it can be, I have no idea. On a less busy day, I shall be taking the matter up with a member of museum staff – it was a massive highlight for me. However, I was impressed with the volume of collections; I had been worried that only a fraction of the previous museum’s artifacts would be placed in this new one, but it feels chock full of exhibits.
In this image, you can see the unique shape of the building’s roof. In case you haven’t seen it before, it is an exaggerated S shape from above, the pitched roofs continuing through the whole space. It looks rather like a warehouse from outside, but the glass ends allow it so much more natural light than I anticipated. Despite that, some of the exhibits at the ‘elbows’ of the museum feel rather dark, far from the light in the end windows. Some of the cars on the right hand side here are too far to see, especially when reading their information cards directly underneath them. As you can see, it was a busy enough day, despite the weather. The light is a bit odd, though. There was an overwhelming green-ness about the entire space – every part of it seems to be a pale green in colour; seats, walls, ceiling – it is quite disconcerting over a period of hours. One of the cars was camouflaged against the wall, being exactly the same shade – look out for that if you’re there. Now, the main reason I went was to see my name on the donor’s wall. This appears to be less a wall, and more an interactive display the size of a TV screen. I saw one at each entrance. Both were mobbed, so if anyone happens to see my name up there, or finds an actual wall of names anywhere, let me know.
Right, all change. It has come to my attention that world meets rosie (formerly china meets rosie) has now been running for over two years! I had quite forgotten that I began it back in mid June 2009 until the other day. Somehow the 18th rang a bell as the date Ying and I had worked towards at that time. I cannot believe it has been so long, except when I look back at the archive and I recall places visited from long ago. With all this under my belt, I feel it’s right that I should decrease my efforts somewhat. I have no new travel plans at the moment and without wishing to bore you rigid with home life, I will write a post a few times a week. I have kept up the daily updates for a long time, and my life is not so exciting as to provide enough entertaining images every day. Worry not, I’m still here and will do my best to document days of interest, but the more I work, the less I will have pictures of, and that seems to be occurring just now. We’ll see how it goes. Let me know how you feel about it – would you rather I updated on the same days every week, or just when it suits?
Apologies for all the typing errors in the past few posts – with my busy recent schedule, I’ve had to write late at night, after a full day’s work, so spellcheck isn’t quite enough! I’ll try to be a bit more cautious – on the upside, at least none of them were spelled wrongly in an offensive way…
– Today Rosie is working working working on new things in Glasgow, Scotland –
This building gives me the dry boak!
However the things inside look rather fun…
Haha, my friends who work in the marketing department at Glasgow Life were desperately drafting press releases stressing that the colour should be described as ‘pistachio’. Boak.. Also, Rosie, I think you live a very exciting life, aided and abetted by your idiot friends..
[...] has been in the planning for weeks; Tom and I went on our last jaunt some months ago to visit the Riverside Museum on its inaugural day. After the success of that outing, we promised we would reconvene for other days out in and around [...]