A lack of exhibition space and restricted budgets dog many museums, not least Ireland’s National Museum whose African artefacts Peter Somerville-Large recalls last viewing as a schoolboy
The ethnographical collection of African art in the National Museum of Ireland, most of whose items come from west and southern Africa, has not been on display since the late 1970s. Before then, a small number of masks and ritual objects, in addition to a selection of Pacific art, were shown in a few crowded cases in Kildare Street, Dublin. I remember admiring them when I was a schoolboy. At a time when African art was increasingly appreciated elsewhere, the collection in Dublin came to be virtually ignored, or regarded as booty acquired from the British Empire. Perhaps understandably it was considered irrelevant in an overcrowded museum which preferred to exhibit Irish antiquities.
In his assessment of Fitzgerald Kavanagh and Partners’ award-winning Student Centre at UCD Seán ó Laoire charts the evolution of Ireland’s largest campus since its foundation
Carissa Farrell reports on sculptor and multi-media artist Andrew Kearney’s new installation ‘Tell Me Something’ for Limerick City of Culture, which continues Kearney’s focus on the policing of the private individual
Without decisive action, our glass heritage will once again be lost, argues Eleanor Flegg, as Róisín de Buitléar’s exhibition’Caution! Fragile’ receives an enthusiastic reception Stateside