Burrell Collection

The Burrell Collection is a museum in Glasgow, Scotland, managed by Glasgow Museums. It houses the art collection of Sir William Burrell and Constance, Lady Burrell. The museum opened in 1983 and reopened on 29 March 2022 following a major refurbishment. It was announced as the winner of the Art Fund Museum of the Year in July 2023. It is the only non-national museum to be the outright winner twice.

The eclectic collection was acquired over many years by Sir William Burrell, a wealthy Glasgow shipping magnate and art collector, and his wife Constance, Lady Burrell. Around 1930, Burrell decided to donate his entire collection to the public. He initially wanted it to go to London, approaching the Westminster government and then London County Council, but negotiations failed due to wartime priorities and maintenance costs. Burrell then turned to Glasgow, where he had already gifted 48 paintings and 30 prints to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in 1925. Influenced by Kelvingrove's director Tom Honeyman, Burrell offered the collection to the city of Glasgow Corporation in 1944. A memorandum of agreement was signed in April 1944, stipulating the collection be housed in a distinct building at least sixteen miles from Glasgow Royal Exchange to avoid air pollution. Burrell donated 450,000 pounds for construction. Finding a suitable site proved difficult; Mugdock Castle Estate and Dougalston estate were considered, but plans were abandoned in 1955 after the National Coal Board announced plans to sink a coal mine nearby. The collection remained in storage for years. The executors eventually waived the distance criteria when the Pollok estate was gifted to the city in 1967. Burrell continued to enrich the collection until 1958, and acquisitions continued after his death, such as the Warwick vase in 1977. The government provided 250,000 pounds for the museum, and the Secretary of State for Scotland later promised to meet 50 percent of the estimated 9.6 million pound construction cost.

The collection comprises over 8,000 works covering five centuries. It is highly eclectic, featuring medieval art, tapestries, glasswork, English oak furniture, European paintings, Islamic art, ancient Egyptian artifacts, modern sculpture, and antiquities from China and Western Asia. Burrell began collecting Chinese antiquities around 1910, acquiring items from all periods of Chinese history including the Neolithic, carved jades, Tang dynasty porcelain, ritual bronze vessels, and antique furniture. The Islamic art holdings include Hispano-Moresque faience, ceramics, carpets from Iran and the Mughal Empire, and embroideries and textiles from Turkey and Uzbekistan. The museum also houses one of the largest collections of medieval stained glass in the world, with over 700 pieces from across Europe, many bearing heraldic motifs. Gothic art is represented by wood and stone sculptures, architectural fragments, and medieval religious art. Modern sculpture in the collection includes works by Jacob Epstein and Auguste Rodin.

Significant medieval works include two panels from the Hulin de Loo Polyptych attributed to Hans Memling, acquired in 1936, and 34 panels of stained glass from the Gothic church of the Carmelites in Boppard, Germany. A stained glass panel from the Franciscan church in Oxford depicting Beatrice of Falkenbourg is considered the oldest surviving donor portrait in good condition. The painting collection features Renaissance works by Giovanni Bellini and Alberto Piazza da Lodi, and northern European pieces by Lucas Cranach the Elder. Dutch Baroque highlights include a young self-portrait by Rembrandt van Rijn, an interior of the Oude Kerk in Delft by Hendrick Cornelisz. van Vliet, and a still life by Evert Collier. French 19th-century art is a major strength, with multiple works by Gustave Courbet, Honore Daumier, Henri Fantin-Latour, and Eugene Boudin. Burrell purchased paintings by Manet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Renoir, Gauguin, and Paul Cezanne. The collection's pastels by Edgar Degas are considered the most important in the United Kingdom. Other notable paintings include works by Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Jean Simeon Chardin, William Hogarth, George Romney, and Henry Raeburn.

The museum is situated in Pollok Country Park, a 360-acre parkland on the south side of Glasgow, three miles from the city centre. The ancestral home of the Stirling-Maxwells, the Pollok estate was transferred to the city in 1967 after Anne Maxwell Macdonald gifted it. An architectural competition was launched in 1970 to design a fine modern building that would integrate with the rural setting and the collection. The competition was delayed by a postal strike, allowing Barry Gasson, collaborating with John Meunier and Brit Andresen of Cambridge University's School of Architecture, to complete his winning entry. Construction commenced on 3 May 1978. The L-shaped building is influenced by Scandinavian design, using orientation to maximize natural light while protecting vulnerable artifacts. The integration of the building, the collection, and the park was central to the design, with larger pieces like Romanesque doorways built directly into the structure. The entrance features a 16th-century stone archway set within a modern red sandstone gable, leading to a central courtyard under a glazed roof. This courtyard is surrounded by reconstructions of three rooms from Hutton Castle, William Burrell's home near Berwick-upon-Tweed. The galleries offer views over formal grassed areas to the south and adjacent woodland to the north. Queen Elizabeth II inaugurated the building in 1983.

The Burrell Collection is located in Pollok Country Park, a few kilometers south of Glasgow city centre. It is managed by Glasgow Museums. The museum closed for a major refurbishment on 23 October 2016, a project that cost nearly 70 million pounds. It reopened to the public on 29 March 2022, attracting roughly 483,000 visitors between late March and the end of that year, and approximately 556,000 visitors in 2024. King Charles III attended the official opening of the redesigned exhibition in October 2022. Within the same park, a ten-minute walk away, Pollok House provides another significant art collection featuring Spanish masters such as Goya, El Greco, and Murillo.