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Museums and Galleries in Scotland

Scotland’s oldest public Museum is the Hunterian in Glasgow, though only one of a large number of civic museums in Scotland. Other high profile and highly popular Scottish museums include the recently refurbished Art Gallery and Museum, Kelvingrove, in Glasgow; also the National Museum of Scotland, adjoining which the Royal Museum is currently (2009) undergoing a massive refurbishment. Art collections are also wide-ranging, with Glasgow’s Kelvingrove and its Gallery of Modern Art notable, while the National Galleries of Scotland show a similar spread of displays from Old Masters to 20th-century work.

All of the larger towns and cities in Scotland have their own collections in civic museums and galleries. Aberdeen has a notable water-colour emphasis, Kirkcaldy is the place to see Scottish artists such as MacTaggart, Paisley is strong on the story of the famous Paisley pattern shawl. Stirling even displays Scotland’s earliest football!

In addition, Scotland also has plenty of smaller community museums that usually make a good starting point for discovering an area’s heritage. There are also plenty of more specialist museums, with themes that include costume, rural life, Roman times, Highland life, fishing heritage and even the story of Scotland’s lighthouses. All of the larger museums have café and shop facilities.