The first – the new V&A museum in Dundee. Built to look like a ship but the structure more like two upturned interlocking pyramids. You get some idea of the outline at
V & A Museum Dundee
Technical feat in concrete with concrete beans attached and steel girders tying the sides together. Still need to get to grips with architectural innovation in the construction. Situated on the waterfront right next to Scott’s Discovery. A must see. Dundee is getting to be a tourist must.
Architects Kengo Kuma and Maurizio Mucciola. They talk of ‘A Living Room for the City’. The bigger pyramid is just an open space for the future exhibits while the smaller does have some exhibits from the V&A in London, but its centre piece is MacIntosh Café interior recovered from Glasgow. Not surprisingly the present main exhibition is of computer games as Dundee is the world games centre.
Need to go back again to admire the Structure and hope that a few more exhibits have been extracted from London.
The second is the much more traditional Kelvingrove Museum in Glasgow. Good solid stone work when Glasgow was the second city of the Empire. The attraction this time is a full-sized dinosaur in the main hall; but I can’t get too excited, but the read gem is the Leonardo Drawings from the Queens Gallery. Leonardo was above all a supreme draughtsman. Just one simple example from the 10 in all.
Drawing by Leonardo
But if like me you like the Scottish Colourists then the Kelvingrove Museum is for you.
And Glasgow just buzzes on a Sunday – The well-known expression‘Glasgow’s miles better’ or now ‘Glasgow is for people’.
PS I have now watched a programme by Foina Bruce on BBC4 covering Leonardo’s development.
The programme leads up to revealing of a new portrait of Christ. Find it at
https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b016xjq6/da-vinci-the-lost-treasure
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