Brian Walsh selects the Cúchulainn Shield from the collection of the County Museum, Dundalk
Michael Waldron selects The Goddess Concordia (c. 1816) by Antonio Canova from the collection of the Crawford Art Gallery
Conor Nolan selects a painting from the Waterford Gallery of Art’s collection, Girl by Leslie MacWeeney
Clodagh Doyle selects the St Brigid’s cross from the collections of the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life in Castlebar, Co Mayo
Emer McGarry selects Study with a Piece Cut Out by Michael Farrell, on view at The Model, Sligo
Jill Cousins selects the painting Breton Woman by Roderic O’Conor from the Hunt Museum’s permanent collection
Roger Kirker selects model ships in bottles from the collection of the National Maritime Museum of Ireland
Logan Sisley selects Michael Collins by John Lavery, on view at the National Museum of Ireland, Collins Barracks
Performance artist Amanda Coogan’s self-portrait Medea became part of the National Self-Portrait Collection of Ireland at the University of Limerick in 2003. Silently elegant, cool and composed, perfectly posed and precise, the image would be as much at home in the hallowed corridors of Vogue as at the university. If we were to take the work at face value in this era of Instagram and selfie euphoria, we could easily assume that the artist is a queen sitting confidently on her chaise-longue throne, her gaze intense and still and her sumptuous blue dress cascading to the floor. We might even feel slightly jealous or disgruntled by the obvious glamour and sophistication on display.
Eamonn McEneaney selects an early 18th-century silver plaque that forms a centrepiece in Waterford’s new Irish Wake Museum
