CHARLES RENNIE MACKINTOSH: MAKING THE GLASGOW STYLE

Currently exhibiting a collection of pieces inspired on this great artist. On exhibition and on sale at at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.

2018 is the 150th anniversary of the birth of celebrated Glasgow architect, designer and artist Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928). Glasgow Museums is delighted to celebrate this significant anniversary with a major new temporary exhibition at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. This exhibition will be one of the key events in the city-wide Mackintosh 2018 programme.

The exhibition will span the lifetime of Charles Rennie Mackintosh (1868–1928) and taking a chronological and thematic narrative, placing Mackintosh at the core of the story, it will present his work in the context of Glasgow, his key predecessors, influences and contemporaries, particularly those working in the Glasgow Style.

‘The Glasgow Style’ is the popular term given to the design and decorative arts centred around the work by teachers, students and graduates of The Glasgow School of Art produced between about 1890 and 1920. At the core of this style is the work of The Four: Charles Rennie Mackintosh, his future wife Margaret Macdonald, her younger sister Frances Macdonald and Frances’s future husband, James Herbert McNair. Glasgow was the birthplace of the only Art Nouveau ‘movement’ in the UK and its style made ripples internationally.

This exhibition will present the very best of Glasgow’s internationally important civic collections, drawing from both those of Glasgow Museums and The Mitchell Library and Archives. A number of these civic works have never previously been on public display, and the majority has not been shown in Glasgow for 30 or more years. The exhibition will also include important loans from private and public collections. About 250 objects will be on display across the full spectrum of media, including stained glass, ceramics, mosaic, metalwork, furniture, stencilling, embroidery, graphics, books, interiors and architecture. The act of making will be communicated across this breadth of media – both through the exhibition and the accompanying event programme – to truly engage and inspire audiences of all ages to visit the other Mackintosh-related buildings and collections in and around Glasgow, and to make and create.at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum.