When the old Museum (Albert Institute) was modernised in the late 70's, the main entrance moved from the corner of Meadowside to the area facing Panmure Street.Also during the renovation, the Central Library moved out of the Museum building in 1979 to the Wellgate, and the Victoria Galleries were renamed the McManus Galleries.
The Museum introduced a new "local history" room which displayed things like Blind Mattie's squeeze box, Tay Bridge disaster relics and so on.
A quirky story from October 1983 was when the Museum put on a football exhibition with all sorts of memorabilia on display. A match programme dated 1925 from the Dundee v Celtic Scottish Cup final was stolen. The police eventually tracked it down and returned it. Bizarrely, it was found inside Tannadice!
The McManus Galleries created a larger space for showing temporary art exhibitions. These changed on a regular basis, sometimes they were big name touring exhibitions and sometimes shows by local artists. I used to visit them quite a lot because they kept varying...from Eduardo Paolozzi to Ansel Adams.
The photo above was taken in 1983 and shows a corner of one of their temporary exhibitions. I think the yellow & black one, 2nd from the left, could be a Sutherland crucifixion.
I'm reasonably sure that the landscape painting on the right is by
ReplyDeleteDuncan Shanks. I remember going to see this exhibition and that very painting blew me away.