Culture
Dundee is home to Scotland's only full-time repertory ensemble, established in the 1930s. One of its alumni, Hollywood actor Brian Cox is a native of the city. The Dundee Repertory Theatre, built in 1982 is the base for Scottish Dance Theatre.
Dundee's principal concert auditorium, the Caird Hall (named after its benefactor, the jute baron James Key Caird) in the City Square regularly hosts the Royal Scottish National Orchestra. Various smaller venues host local and international musicians during Dundee's annual Jazz, Guitar and Blues Festivals. The Dundee Contemporary Arts, which opened in 1999 in the city's cultural quarter, is home to both an art gallery and art house cinema.
The city's main museum and art gallery, McManus Galleries is in Albert Square. The exhibits include a collection of fine and decorative art, items from Dundee's history and natural history artefacts. Britain's only full-time public observatory, Mills Observatory at the summit of the city's Balgay Hill was gifted to the city by linen manufacturer and keen amateur scientist, John Mills in 1935. Sensation Science Centre in the Greenmarket is a science centre based on the five senses through a series of interactive shows and exhibits. Verdant Works is a museum dedicated to the once dominant jute industry in Dundee and is based in a former jute mill. The University of Dundee also runs several public museums and galleries, including the D'Arcy Thompson Zoology Museum and the Tayside Medical History Museum. A new £47 million pound centre for art and design known as the "V&A at Dundee" is to be built south of Craig Harbour onto the River Tay for completion in 2015. The new museum may bring another 500,000 extra visitors to the city and create up to 900 jobs for the area.
The city's archives and records are mostly kept by two archives, Dundee City Archives, which are operated by Dundee City Council and the University of Dundee's Archive Services. Dundee City Archives holds the official records of the city and of the former Tayside Regional Council. the archive also holds the records of various people groups and organizations connected to the city. The University's Archive Services hold a wide range of material relating to the University and its predecessor institutions and to individuals associated with the University such as D'Arcy Wentworth Thompson. Archive Services is also home to athe archives of several individuals, businesses and organizations based in Dundee and the surrounding area. The records held include a substantial number of business archives relating to the jute and linen industry in Dundee, records of other businesses including the archives of the Alliance Trust and the department store G. L. Wilson, the records of the Brechin Diocese of the Scottish Episcopal Church and the NHS Tayside Archive. The same archive also holds the Michael Peto collection which includes thousands of the famed photojournalist's photographs, negatives, slides, publications and papers.
Dundee is home to DC Thomson & Son Ltd established in 1905, which produces over 200 million magazines, newspapers and comics every year, which include The Beano, The Dandy and the The Press and Journal. Dundee has a strong literary heritage, with several authors having been born, lived or studied in the city. These include A. L. Kennedy, Rosamunde Pilcher, Kate Atkinson, Thomas Dick, Mary Shelley, Mick McCluskey, John Burnside and Neil Forsyth. The Dundee International Book Prize is a biennial competition open to new authors, offering a prize of £10,000 and publication by Polygon Books. Past winners have included Andrew Murray Scott, Claire-Marie Watson and Malcolm Archibald. William McGonagall, regularly cited as the "world's worst poet", worked and wrote in the city, often giving performances of his work in pubs and bars. Many of his poems are about the city and events therein, such as his work The Tay Bridge Disaster. City of Recovery Press was founded in Dundee, and has become a controversial figure in documenting the darker side of the city.
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Famous quotes containing the word culture:
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“With respect to a true culture and manhood, we are essentially provincial still, not metropolitan,—mere Jonathans. We are provincial, because we do not find at home our standards; because we do not worship truth, but the reflection of truth; because we are warped and narrowed by an exclusive devotion to trade and commerce and manufacturers and agriculture and the like, which are but means, and not the end.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Any historian of the literature of the modern age will take virtually for granted the adversary intention, the actually subversive intention, that characterizes modern writing—he will perceive its clear purpose of detaching the reader from the habits of thought and feeling that the larger culture imposes, of giving him a ground and a vantage point from which to judge and condemn, and perhaps revise, the culture that produces him.”
—Lionel Trilling (1905–1975)