Marble torso of a boy - Roman - 1st Century AD

Visited Pollok Park today with Four Story and the HG. Had coffee in Pollok House, always a good plan. Also visited the Burrell Collection.....I particularly love the architecture, and the fact that it seems to bring the woodland of the park into the building.

The eclectic collection was acquired over many years by Sir William Burrell, a wealthy Glaswegian shipping magnate and art collector, who then gifted it to the city of Glasgow Corporation in 1944. The gift was made on the condition that the collection was to be housed in a building 16 miles (26 km) from the centre of Glasgow, to show the works to their greatest advantage, and to avoid the damaging effects of air pollution at the time. The trustees spent over 20 years trying to find a suitable 'home' for the collection, one which met all the criteria set out in the Trust Deed, without success. Eventually, when the Pollok Estate was gifted to the city in 1967, the Trustees had certain terms of the deed waived, which allowed the current site, 3 miles (5 km) from the city centre and within the city boundaries, to be chosen for the collection.

A design competition for the museum building in 1971 was won by architect Barry Gasson, designed in collaboration with Brit Andresen.

The building is L-shaped in plan and is specifically tailored to house and display the diverse collection, with larger pieces such as Romanesque doorways built into the structure, at the same time giving views out into the park over formal grassed areas to the south, and into adjacent woodland to the north. Galleries on two levels house various artefacts, over a basement storage level.

The museum was opened by Queen Elizabeth II in 1983 and was named as Scotland's second greatest post-war building (after Gillespie, Kidd & Coia's St. Peter's Seminary) in a poll of architects by Prospect magazine in 2005.

The Burrell contains an important collection of medieval art including stained glass and tapestries, oak furniture, medieval weapons and armour, Islamic art, artefacts from ancient Egypt and China, Impressionist works by Degas and Cézanne, modern sculpture and a whole host of other artefacts from around the world, all collected by one man.