Undiscovered Scotland

 

The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum, to give it its full name, is a superb museum and art gallery standing in the heart of Dundee. Museums, and art galleries, come in all shapes and sizes and The McManus is just about perfect. It’s large enough to offer a very wide range of exhibits and artworks, yet not so large that you find yourself getting lost or losing interest.

The Gothic Revival-style building stands in an urban clearing which allows it to be appreciated to the full from a little distance away. The west end, shown in the header image, is particularly fine and comes complete with a magnificent staircase leading to a grand entrance. These days this is for show and the actual entrances are in the middle of the building on both sides.

The west end of the building started life as a memorial to Prince Albert and was designed by George Gilbert Scott. It opened in 1867 as The Albert Institute. The site had previously been an area of wetland called Quaw Bog and a tower that had originally been planned was abandoned because of concerns about the stability of the ground. (Continues below images...)

 

The building was extended to the east in two stages by 1889. The city corporation took over the running of what later became the McManus Galleries (named after Maurice McManus, the Lord Provost from 1962 to 1967) in 1959. After a major refurbishment that saw the building close between 2005 and 2010, it reopened as “The McManus: Dundee’s Art Gallery and Museum”.

Finding your way around The McManus is fairly straightforward, though if you have any issues, the friendly and helpful staff are pleased to assist.

The art galleries are on the upper floor and the museum galleries are on the ground floor. Everyone will have their own favourites. We were fascinated by the large model of the centre of Dundee in 1850 and by the fine collection of Pictish symbol stones.

As we've already said, there are entrances on both sides of The McManus. The southern entrance brings you into the reception and shop with, to its right, the cafe. Passing through, you move into an exhibition about the history of the museum. Nearby is a smaller area looking at "What is a Museum?" The west end of the ground floor is home to a fascinating gallery looking at "The Making of Modern Dundee", while two galleries at the east end cover "Landscapes and Lives".

The upper floor is linked together by "The Long Gallery", with creative learning rooms on either side of it. At the west end of the upper floor is the gallery: "Dundee and the World". The east end is home th three linked galleries covering "Here and Now", the "20th Century Gallery" and "The Victoria Gallery".