Pollok Country Park, in Glasgow’s Southside, is home to one of the greatest art collections in the world and a grand Georgian stately home, both of which were gifted to the city
Words by FIONA LAING
Stand in Pollok Country Park and you could be in the heart of the countryside – there are woodlands, fields, and Highland cattle. Of course, you are not in the countryside but in Scotland’s largest city, and though the rural idyll is something of an illusion, the two world-class cultural attractions are not.
The Burrell Collection is housed in a modern, award-winning building designed specifically for its art. Pollok House is also filled with works of art, but it is a considerably older stately home.
That the Burrell Collection and Pollok House – and their valuable contents – are open to visitors is thanks to the generosity of wealthy Glasgow families, as both were gifted to the City of Glasgow.
The Burrell Collection is the star of Glasgow’s cultural scene this year, as it has recently reopened following a £68 million six-year refurbishment of its ageing building.
With the finest Chinese ceramics, medieval stained glass, tapestries, and French art, the 9,000-piece collection is an art experience like no other.
The galleries invite you to admire the objects while simultaneously distracting you as the light changes on the whim of the clouds as it floods in through the glass walls, which in turn reveal the woodland drama outside.
Turn a corner and there’s another treasure to cast its spell over you. A group of porcelain Qing Dynasty Immortals, ‘China’s superhuman heroes’, remind me where my passion for Chinese art was first ignited.
The exotic colours and forms fascinated me when I first visited the Burrell Collection in the 1980s, sending me off in search of Oriental designs on my subsequent travels.
Today these small figures, with their inscrutable expressions and flowing china robes, enthral me again.
Elsewhere, paintings hang at child-friendly heights, while videos and interactive features open the experience to everyone.
The refurbishment has opened more gallery space, improved energy efficiency, and allowed a fresh take on displaying its treasures.
Of course, the world-class stars of the collection are the late Gothic and early Renaissance works, which include tapestries, stained-glass, furniture, sculpture, Chinese jade and ceramics. Degas is the headline star in terms of 19th-century French artworks.
The collection was amassed by Sir William Burrell (1861–1958), a Glas
