The Hunterian, Glasgow’s Oldest Museum

Glasgow brims with Scottish culture and is justly renowned for its multidisciplinary appeal, from art and artifacts to music and museums. Spend a day or three digging into this rich heritage and you’ll only scratch the surface, whether you’re visiting the Burrell Collection in Pollack Park or jamming at King Tut’s Wah Wah Hut. Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city and it sprawls more than Edinburgh, so it helps to have a plan of attack and a tidy batch of must-visit selections before arrival. Here’s one to add to that list: The Hunterian Museum.

The Hunterian Museum is named after the Scottish physician William Hunter and housed in the University of Glasgow’s main quadrangle, a beautiful neo-Gothic building designed by Sir George Gilbert Scott, in the city’s glorious West End. The museum opened in 1807, so, like it says on the tin, this is the oldest museum in Glasgow, which I consider to be a mark of utmost distinction given Glasgow’s cultural riches.

You kind of have to wander around the quadrangle’s halls to find the museum, and it reminded me of being in college. I passed a couple taking glamour shots among the arches and pillars and then a room full of students quietly taking a test. I then came to a mustard-yellow wall declaring I’d reached the Hunterian Museum!

William Hunter professed to be a surgeon and anatomist, but he was also a collector of all things exotic and weird from the height of Colonialism. “New worlds” were being found every decade as courageous sea captains sailed ever farther from Britain’s shores in search of treasure, land, and resources.

Entering the museum I was face-to-face with the permanent exhibit on the Romans in Scotland, which during my visit was a fascinating collection of stones from the Antonine Wall. To my left stood a wing dedicated to William Hunter himself, with a range of odd items like his death mask and an overview of his life and times.

Rome’s Final Frontier was perfect for me as I love the late Iron Age and its transition into the European Dark Ages. Pillars, headstones, and imperial records etched in stone ringed a central pocket in the great, domed entryway of the museum. It’s fascinating perusing the ancient sculptures and browsing the mundane items of soldiers so very far from home. Can you imagine being at the edge of the empire, fighting an unknown enemy, many months from home and loved ones?

The wing to the right of the entryway opens into a beautiful two-floor museum of archetypal beauty. Here I found everything from stones and neolithic axe heads to an entire plesiosaur skeleton. This permanent section of the museum covers all eras with a natural history bent sure to appeal to a huge swath of tastes. Upstairs I found more recent antiques from the 18th and 19th centuries, much of it related to the development of medicine and surgery as you might expect from a surgeon.

The Hunterian is a small museum by objective standards, but it could easily take up your morning if you’re studying even half the exhibits. If you’re in the mood for more cultural indulgence, head across University Avenue to the Hunterian Art Gallery and Mackintosh House. These installations, as well as the Zoology Museum and Anatomy Museum in other buildings, are technically all covered under the moniker The Hunterian. The Hunterian Art Gallery is small like its sister museum and filled with paintings from Rubens, Rembrandt, the Glasgow Boys, and James McNeill Whistler.

The Mackintosh House is the fully reassembled interior of Charles Rennie Mackintosh’s Glasgow home. As Glasgow’s most famous architect, you’ll find his work dotted across town and the Mackintosh House is a great place to learn more about his distinct style.

Spoiler: I’m not a huge fan of museums. Generally when I visit one I’m lucky if I can force myself to spend an hour inside, but The Hunterian is a beautiful little museum that is superbly curated and captured my attention and imagination. Its small size makes it approachable and served to catch my interest (whereas a visit to the Louvre had me seeking the nearest exits). I visited on a rainy Tuesday morning in early May and I must have been one of maybe a score of visitors.

With the Burrell Collection in Pollack Park closed for refurbishment until 2020, The Hunterian is my top recommendation for museum time in Glasgow. Kelvingrove is a close second, but that’s the subject of another post…