Burrell and the culture of capital: A story in black and white

Burrell, like his American contemporaries and competitors, Hearst and Getty, built a vast personal wealth through the exploitation of labour and spent it building up a collection of works of art, sourced by his dealers and agents. The objects acquired were very far removed from the working population from whom Burrell drew his wealth. Burrell was well known for building ships with cheap labour in times of economic depression and selling them at great profit.

It is very fitting that the Burrell museum is based in Pollok Park, a place which was acquired and sustained by slave labour. The wealth of the Stirling Maxwells of Pollok, Keir, Gargunnock and Kippendavie came from the sugar plantations of Hampden and Frontier on the islands of Jamaica and St Kitts. They also benefited from government compensation when slavery was abolished; one of their claims in 1834 was £21,517 for the ‘loss’ of 690 enslaved Africans.

This narrative will not be dominant in the £68.25 million Burrell “renaissance”, in spite of the appointment of a Legacies of Slavery and Empire Curator by Glasgow Life in 2020. However, more than 16 curators (featured on the Burrell website) have worked to find meaning in the collection of this magpie millionaire and ‘tell stories’ for visitors. One curator has spent time examining the 9000 objects in the collection and finding 300 which relate to the LGBTQ issues, with the LGBTQ community. There are many such Advisory Panels made up of Audience Champions finding captivating stories, mindfulness and other benefits in the collection.

The Burrell has 9000 objects covering 6000 years of history from all over the world, with the exception of Glasgow and Scotland. The white slaves who financed Burrell had no kind of culture worthy of his notice, and we, their successors, have been allocated only one curator by Glasgow Life to curate Glasgow’s history and culture. The three buildings which are pertinent: People’s Palace, Provand’s Lordship and the St Mungo’s Museum were part of the hit-list of 69 venues to be chopped in the wake of Covid-19 and it remains to be seen if they will survive the cash haemorrhage needed to sustain this Pollok Park vampire.

In less than a century after the Abolition of Slavery, the slave money had run out in Scotland, and Sir John Stirling-Maxwell founded the National Trust for Scotland in Pollok House in 1931, giving estate owners the opportunity to pass their responsibilities to a quasi-public body.

When Burrell first opened, at a cost of £16.5 million in 1983 it allegedly “put Glasgow on the map” but only for 33 years. How long the new Burrell will last is anybody’s guess. How much more will be cut to pay for it remains to be seen. At least Hearst and Getty in California were true capitalists and built and funded their own museums. 

To date, Burrell has not made much of an impression on Scottish culture. However, this novel by Michael Gallagher is hugely entertaining, and well worth reading. Glasgow Life denies it ever happened, as well as refusing to tell us how much they paid for the Nazi-looted tapestry.