The Burrell Collection is majestic and abundant, a rich man’s hoard of 9,000 objects, industrial wealth transmogrified into Chinese porcelain and medieval stained glass, paintings by French impressionists and Scottish colourists, Persian carpets, suits of armour, Roman and Egyptian antiquities. Amassed by the Glaswegian shipping magnate Sir William Burrell, it was given by him and his wife, Constance, to the city of Glasgow in 1944. Eventually, in 1983, a new building was completed to house it, in Pollok Country Park, the city’s largest green space.
It’s an exceptional work of architecture whose conception goes back to 1971, when the young Cambridge-basedarchitects Barry Gasson, John Meunier and Brit Andresen won a competition to design the collection’s home. Its principal aim was to make the most of its natural setting, in high, pillared, glass-walled galleries that allowed you to see a Rodin bronze or a Ming sculpture against a woodland backdrop. But it didn’t get you there immediately. As Meunier now puts it, you experienced “a gradual immersion into the magical world of the collection”.
