He and his agents scoured Europe for coins, minerals, paintings and prints, ethnographic materials, books and manuscripts, as well as insects and other biological specimens.

At first, the entire collection was housed together and displayed in the packed conditions common in museums of that time, but significant sections were later moved away to other parts of the university.

Housed in large halls in George Gilbert Scott's University buildings on Gilmorehill, the museum features extensive displays relating to William Hunter and his collections, Roman Scotland (especially the Antonine Wall), geology, ethnography, ancient Egypt, scientific instruments, coins and medals, and much more.

The Gallery is now housed in a modern, custom-built facility that is part of the extensive Glasgow University Library complex, designed by William Whitfield.

[16] The gallery has held three major Mackintosh exhibitions: Architecture (2014),[17] Travel Sketches (2015)[18] and Unbuilt (2018),[19] as well as two based on their Whistler collection Watercolours (2013)[20] and Art and Legacy (2021).

It stands on the site of one of two rows of terraced houses which were once sections of Hillhead Street and Southpark Avenue, demolished in the 1960s to make room for the university's expansion across the residential crown of Gilmorehill.

The museum displays thousands of anatomical specimens, including the Evelyn tables and the skeleton of the "Irish giant" Charles Byrne, and many surgical instruments.

Both brothers were celebrated in the town of their birth, East Kilbride, at the small Hunter House Museum, later closed due to budget cuts.