Best natural history museum in Glasgow?

[cardamoncoffee]

Reposting here from the travel board for more traffic:

I've got four hours to spend in Glasgow next month with ds who loves animals and likes visiting museums. What is the best one for this? I've searched on TA and can't work out if the Hunterian Zoology one would have more animal stuff than the Kelvingrove.

Kelvingrove is much, much bigger than the Hunterian. The Hunterian is lovely but more of a smaller university museum if you know what I mean, more academic. You can easily spend ages in KG but if you wanted to see the Hunterian too it’s only about 10-15 mins walk up Kelvin Way and it’s a nice walk

Kelvingrove is brilliant. Our two have loved it since they were pre-schoolers (they're 5 and 6 now).

Kelvingrove.

The Hunterian is brilliant and quirky but the Zoology museum is in a different building. It's much smaller, very dated and open limited hours as you have to walk through University buildings to get there. It's a 30 minute visit tops.

Kelvingrove has much more to see, there's a cafe, and a lovely park next door.

Kelvingrove is lovely for children. I would go there.

Thanks. He has ASD and is very animal focussed, not much interest in anything else. Does the Kelvingrove have a big animal section? On TA it gives the impression that it is mostly art?

Yes, the west court has some big animals and beyond that some ancient animals.

www.glasgowlife.org.uk/media/3864/kgfloorplancoffeefirst.pdf

@cardamoncoffee just a wee thought - if your DS isn’t keen on big noises it’s worth knowing there’s an organ recital around 1pm (lasts about 10-15 mins) and it’s lovely but loud. My wee boy isn’t keen on it so if we’re there at that time and we usually move to a different bit of the museum (the rainforest bit upstairs).

Depending on what time you’re in Glasgow, you could easily go to KG in the morning for a couple of hours, have lunch (lovely pizza at Baffo across the road from KG though the museum itself does have a cafe and areas you can eat packed lunch), then have a nice walk through the park to the Graham Kerr Building where the Zoology museum lives. 7 minute walk according to Google

These are all very helpful, thanks a lot.

I think they do autism friendly times... Might be early opening or something, so perhaps won't match the time you have available, but it should say on the website. I think Glasgow museums are making efforts to be more autism friendly in general.

Ah, I knew I'd seen something somewhere... Have found the link! Hunterian now have sensory backpacks. Might be of interest. www.gla.ac.uk/hunterian/visit/accessibility/

We loved the Glasgow science centre and didn’t finish all the floors, kids were 10 & 6 then. Lots of interactive stuff.