MUSEUM lovers are in for a culture-packed start to 2017.

Glasgow Museums has announced its programme for the first half of the new year, featuring new displays at GoMA, Riverside and Kelvingrove.

They include comics, film and history from world-renowned artists.

Chairman of Glasgow Life, Councillor Archie Graham, said: “Glasgow Museums collection offers an incredibly varied range of objects, from challenging contemporary works of art like Hito Steyerl’s Abstract, to nostalgic funhouse mirrors that will take many Glaswegians back to time spent at the shows in the Kelvin Hall.

“This depth and breadth of works puts Glasgow in the privileged position of being able to work with a range of artists, community groups and large organisations to host an exciting range of diverse exhibitions in 2017.

"We very much look forward to welcoming regular visitors and new audiences to all our museums over the coming months, when they can enjoy and at times question, the different themes explored in the forthcoming exhibitions.”

Frank Quitely: The Art of Comics will run from April 1 to October 1 and Kelvingrove, showing off Glaswegian and Scottish writers and artists such as Frank Quietly, Mark Miller, of KickAss fame, and Grant Morrison, of DC Comics's Batman and All Star Superman.

Frank Quitely is the alter ego to Glasgow-born artist Vincent Deighan, who is now synonymous with characters such as Superman, Batman and the X-Men.

From February 17 to September 17, GoMA will be hosting new show Polygraphs with Berlin-based filmmaker and writer Hito Steyerl’s work Abstract (2012) central to the piece.

Abstract was gifted to Glasgow Museums by the Contemporary Art Society through the Collections Fund 2015.

Polygraphs includes some of the most compelling figures in 20th century Scottish art and younger artists whose work has entered a UK collection for the first time.

Also at GoMA, from May, will be the work Balconies.

Prior to 1776, the site on which the GoMA now stands was rural land on the western fringes of the city of Glasgow.

The historic building has a rich past, which is explored in a new display, spread over Balcony 1 and 2.

A timeline begins when the building was commissioned as a mansion house for one of Glasgow’s richest tobacco Lords, William Cunninghame, before becoming a bank and an exchange that traded in sugar, rum and tobacco and in later year’s pig-iron, coal and shipping.

Later it was Glasgow’s first telephone exchange and in the early 20th Century it became a restaurant then a library and an art gallery.

At Riverside Museum, A Fair Life will show how Scottish showmen and women have played a role in the cultural history of Scotland.

Scotland has between 3 and 5000 Travelling Showpeople, distinct from Travellers, who operate rides, games and food stalls in its funfairs, markets and more recently even in shopping centres.

An estimated 80 per cent of Scottish Showpeople are Glaswegian, living in around 50 privately owned yards across the city.

This is the largest concentration of Showpeople in Europe and date back to the eight-week winter carnival that ran at Kelvin Hall from the 1930s to the 1980s.

Last year Glasgow Museums venues were visited by more than 3.5 million people.