Glasgow Council “Sells” a Zaha Hadid Museum

The move is part of a plan to raise funds to finance a pay adjustment for the council’s female workers. The council will then lease the buildings back in order to keep them in public use.

Facade of the Riverside Museum in Glasgow. At mapsofworld.com

In times when everything has a price, news like the story put out a few days ago by the British broadcaster BBC comes as almost no surprise. Glasgow City Council has decided to “sell” a series of the city’s landmark buildings in order to raise funds: among them is the Riverside Museum, an institution devoted to transport whose magnificent contemporary architecture, the work of Zaha Hadid, has turned it into a contemporary icon of the Scottish capital. The museum opened in 2011 at Pointhouse Quay and marked the beginning of the regeneration of the area, just as happened at the end of the twentieth century with the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao. In 2014 the Riverside Museum won the European Museum of the Year Award, granted by the European Museum Forum, which honors the most innovative museum institutions.

The architect Zaha Hadid in front of the Riverside Museum in Glasgow, 2011. Photo: Jeff J. Michel / Getty Images. At wnpr.org

The building that houses the Scottish museum was the first institutional commission given by the United Kingdom to the architect, who died in 2016. The council’s plan is to mortgage various buildings, and it does not stop at the Riverside Museum but also includes landmarks such as the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, the SEC Armadillo and the Emirates Arena, among others. Far from being a mere money-raising drive, the decision has been taken for a good cause: the funds obtained will help cover a pay adjustment announced by the council for its female workers. According to the leader of Glasgow City Council, Susan Aitken, the annual cost of the agreement will cost the public purse around 25 million pounds “for years.” To cover it, an outlay of 548 million pounds has been set, much of which will be obtained from the aforementioned mortgages. Glasgow City Council also announced that the buildings will remain in public ownership and will stay open and in use, without any detriment to their users.

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