The Beholder’s Share examines unrealised and unexisting projects from the IMMA Collection. The focus of the exhibition is the role that the viewer can play in imaginatively completing an unrealised work.

The phrase “the beholder’s share”, which was introduced by the Austrian art historian Alois Riegl and popularised by Ernst Gombrich, denotes that part of an artwork’s meaning which must be contributed by the viewer. The documentation of unrealised and in some cases impossible works in this exhibition is intended to provoke an exploration of this latent potential which exists even when the work itself does not.

In the years since the founding of IMMA, the building it occupies, the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, and its grounds have been the site of sculptural proposals by many artists including Joseph Kosuth, Stephan Balkenhol and John Newling. Sol LeWitt and David Tremlett each proposed wall drawings for the chapel. Also in the IMMA Collection are a ‘relic’ of an audio/radio work by William Furlong, and a proposal by Christo for an immense sculpture in the Texas desert made of oil drums, both speaking to ongoing global concerns about communication and energy. Archival documentation of Joseph Beuys’ proposed Free International University for Dublin, intended for the Royal Hospital site, brings to light a forgotten episode of Irish artistic and political history.