The McManus: Dundee's Art Gallery and Museum is a Gothic Revival-style building, located in the centre of Dundee, Scotland. The building houses a museum and art gallery with a collection of fine and decorative art as well as a natural history collection. It is protected as a Category A listed building.The concept for the building was originally commissioned as a memorial to Prince Albert and intended to contain room for lectures, museum, picture gallery and a reference library for students by the British Association for the Advancement of Science. It was agreed that the funding for the building should be provided by the inhabitants of Dundee. Although the city could not afford such a lavish memorial outright, it did contribute £300. A guaranteed fund of £4,205 15/- from 168 contributors was collected which included a munificent gift from the Baxter family which totalled £420.The building was designed by the architect George Gilbert Scott, who was an expert for the restoration of mediaeval churches and advocate of the Gothic architectural style. He intended to design a large tower like in his previous work at St. Nikolai, Hamburg. The foundations were situated in a small wetland called Quaw Bog at the confluence of the Scourin Burn and Friar Burn, which has since been drained. This meant that the area under the building site was underpinned by large wood beams. However, when construction began in 1865, the ground proved too unstable to support the larger tower that he envisaged. The building was opened as the Albert Institute in 1867.
Two further sections, which extended the building by four art galleries and four museum galleries, were added by 1889. The central section was designed to Scott's intention by David MacKenzie, with the Eastern Galleries by William Alexander. The contents of the Watt Institute, founded in 1848, were incorporated into the collection before the opening of the civic museum and art gallery in 1873. Between 1873 and 1949, the buildings were administrated as part of public library service. From 1959, the city corporation took over the running of the administration. Ironically, following a later refurbishment the building now commemorates the Lord Provost Maurice McManus. Initially retitled McManus Galleries, after refurbishment in 2010, it is now formally known as The McManus: Dundee's Art Gallery and Museum.
In 1976, cracks were discovered in south-east corner of the building. The subsequent survey found that the building was partially subsiding. During 1979, remedial measures involved placing load-bearing concrete piles and cross-beams positioned to replace rotted timbers.The building was closed to the public on 24 October 2005 for a £7.8million redevelopment by Page\Park Architects and was reopened to the public on 28 February 2010. Currently, much of the McManus collection, which includes works by Dundee-based artists James McIntosh Patrick and Alberto Morrocco, is located at the former Carnegie Library on Barrack Street.
The collection includes three paintings by Thomas Musgrave Joy which celebrate Grace Darling's rescue of passengers on the paddlesteamer Forfarshire.
Verdant Works, also known as Scotland's Jute Museum, is a former jute mill in the Blackness area of Dundee, Scotland. It was purchased in 1991 by the Dundee Heritage Trust. The trust restored the buildings, which were officially opened by Prince Charles in 1996, as a museum dedicated to the textile industry, an industry that once dominated the city's economy.
Maggie's centres are a network of drop-in centres across the United Kingdom and Hong Kong, which
aim to help anyone who has been affected by cancer. They are not intended as a replacement for conventional cancer therapy, but as a caring environment that can provide support, information and practical advice. They are located near, but are detached from, existing NHS hospitals.
The Scottish registered charity which promotes, builds and runs the centres is formally named the Maggie Keswick Jencks Cancer Caring Trust, but refers to itself simply as Maggie's. It was founded by and named after the late Maggie Keswick Jencks, who died of cancer in 1995. Like her husband, architectural writer and critic Charles Jencks, she believed in the ability of buildings to uplift people. The buildings that house the centres have been designed by leading architects, including Frank Gehry, Zaha Hadid and Richard Rogers.Patrons of the charity include Frank Gehry, Jon Snow, Kirsty Wark, and Sarah Brown, wife of former British prime minister Gordon Brown. The charity's chief executive officer is Laura Lee, who was Maggie's cancer nurse. The President of the charity is Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall.
The University of Dundee is a public research university in Dundee, Scotland. It is a red brick university, founded as a university college in 1881 with a donation from the prominent Baxter family of textile manufacturers. The institution was, for most of its early existence, a constituent college of the University of St Andrews alongside United College and St Mary's College located in the town of St Andrews itself. Following significant expansion, the University of Dundee gained independent university status by royal charter in 1967 while retaining much of its ancient heritage and governance structure.
The main campus of the university is located in Dundee's West End which contains many of the university's teaching and research facilities; the Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design, Dundee Law School and the Dundee Dental Hospital and School. The university has additional facilities at Ninewells Hospital, containing its school of medicine; Perth Royal Infirmary, which houses a clinical research centre; and in Kirkcaldy, Fife, containing part of its school of nursing and health sciences. The annual income of the institution for 2018–19 was £256.4 million of which £70 million was from research grants and contracts, with an expenditure of £263.1 million.
