Special Displays

Glasgow Museums’ special display spaces provide a unique opportunity for community groups to create their own exhibitions using the collections stored at Kelvin Hall.

Community Display

The Community Display section at Kelvin Hall is an area where curators and community groups work together to create small exhibitions of items from the collections held at Kelvin Hall. 

The current display, titled 'How we used to use things', has been curated by a group brought together by Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). They have a wide range of careers, hobbies, and interests, connecting through a shared love of culture.

The display has QR codes that visitors can scan for audio descriptions of the text and items in the display. There are also braille interpretations. The area is marked by a tactile red floor sticker. 

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Community Display curated by a group from RNIB

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Listen to the introduction

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Audio descriptions of items in the display

Heritage Arcade

Kelvin Hall has had a fascinating history and you can learn all about it at the Heritage Arcade. Discover the various lives of Kelvin Hall as you walk along the timeline. Here you can see a Magic Mirror from the well-loved Carnival and Circus, or watch film footage from the Moving Image Archive

Show People Display

In 2013 two Showpeople, Olivia Newsome and Duncan Smith, were working with Glasgow Museums. At the time it was mentioned that some well-known circus mirrors were considered missing in the Showpeople community. This intrigued our Curator of Social History, who checked some mirrors in the museum collection which had very little information known about them. Duncan helped to confirm that the mirrors were in fact those that the Showpeople were speaking about!
 
Together, Glasgow Museums and a team of Glasgow Showpeople worked together to put the Short/Stout mirror on display. It helps represent the wonderful memories of not only this attraction, but the circus at Kelvin Hall and carnival as a whole.
 
Showpeople Magic Mirrors, © CSG CIC Glasgow Museums and Libraries Collections