Hunterian Museum

The University of Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery is the oldest public museum in Scotland. It opened in 1807, in a specially constructed building off the High Street, in the east end of Glasgow. In the 1870s, the museum, along with the rest of the University, moved to its present site at Gilmorehill in the west end of Glasgow to escape the horrific pollution caused by industrial developments around the city centre. The money to build the museum, and the core of its original collections, came from the bequest of the Scottish anatomist and scientist William Hunter, who died in London in 1783. As well as his medical collections, which arose from his own work, Hunter collected very widely, often assisted by his many royal and aristocratic patrons. He and his agents scoured Europe for coins, minerals, paintings and prints, ethnographic materials, books and manuscripts, as well as insects and other biological specimens. Since Hunter's death, the collections have grown considerably, and now include some of the most important collections of work by artists such as Charles Rennie Mackintosh and James McNeill Whistler, as well as superb geological, zoological, anatomical, archaeological, ethnographic and scientific instrument collections. Parts of the collections catalogues have been transferred to computer catalogue, and can be searched here: [1] More general information is available at [1] NB There is also another Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons in London. This was founded on the collections of William's brother John Hunter (surgeon). Both brothers are celebrated in the town of their birth, East Kilbride, at the small Hunter House Museum. Category:Scotland\nCategory:Glasgow