Exhibition and museum review: the Riverside Museum of Transport and Travel, Glasgow

Review of the Riverside Museum of Transport and Travel, Glasgow. Interpreting transport as anything that takes you somewhere, it is an inclusive, exciting and eclectic museum, already popular with the public. Some displays, such as the life story of the magnificent South African Railways' locomotive number 3007 (constructed nearby), are exemplary in their engagement and brevity. The locomotive itself is presented off its rails, suspended in space - an enjoyable way of displaying redundancy. Some views of it, and of other exhibits, are obscured where they shouldn't be - a problem with this otherwise magnificent new building. The museum takes a postmodernist position in constructing the museum's visitors as consumers of transport and travel, using their experiences as hooks, and this works well as far as it goes. But one result is a loss of focus on the recent industrial past of the area the museum inhabits, and of Clydesiders as transport producers. (Quotes from original text)