The inauguration of a series of new climate-controlled galleries with exhibitions of works by Picasso and Francis Bacon, the largest presentation in Europe to date of the work of the distinguished American painter Leon Golub, an exhibition from a major donation of graphics and prints from North, South and Central America and the development of further international links by the Museum’s Education and Community Department are all part of an exciting and wide-ranging programme for 2000 announced today (Tuesday 25 January) by the Irish Museum of Modern Art. Plans for the coming year also include an exhibition of Land and Body Art works by the leading American Conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim, displays from two important private collections recently given on long-term loan to the Museum, and a research project on the subject of older people as adult learners.
Commenting on the programme for the coming year, the Museum’s Director Declan McGonagle said:
Year 2000 will see a major new initiative at the Museum when the New Galleries open with important but little seen works by Picasso and Francis Bacon. This new state-of-the-art provision will allow the Museum present bodies of fragile historical 20th century artworks, which would otherwise not be shown here, and begins the completion phase of the development of buildings on this site as components of the Museum. The Museum will continue to juxtapose the work of younger innovative artists with work by established figures both from the Irish and non-Irish context, across a wide range of media including installation, sculpture, photography and painting. “
Displays from the Collections will enable people to experience the growing body of artists held by the Museum, and the award winning Education and Community programmes will give people increasing access opportunities. Year 2000 will be a year of consolidation of existing strands of programming and major new development in the overall structure.
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Exhibitions
In the most significant development at the Museum since its inauguration in
1991, a series of new climate-controlled galleries, which will house exhibitions
from important collections worldwide, opens to the public in the Deputy Master’s House on the Museum site on 30 March with two major international exhibitions. Picasso: Working on Paper (30 March – 9 July), curated by Anne Baldassari of the Musée Picasso in Paris, comprises works drawn from the Musée Picasso, the Picasso family and selected museums and concentrates on Picasso’s use of newspaper as a ground, as a source of subject matter and as a material in collages over a long period. The Barry Joule Archive: Works on Paper attributed to Francis Bacon (30 March – 27 August) is the first showing of this body of work highlighting Bacon’s awareness of and involvement with popular culture and mass media. Works by leading American Conceptual artist Dennis Oppenheim (21 July – January 2001) and paintings and drawings by Irish artist Colin Middleton from the George and Maura McClelland Collection (8 September – February 2001) will be shown in the New Galleries later in the year.
The strand of programming concentrating on the work of younger international artists continues with exhibitions by the Danish-born installation artist Olafur Eliasson (until 30 April) and the Belfast-born photographic artist Hannah Starkey (17 May – 27 August). A retrospective of the work of the American painter Leon Golub can be seen from 5 July to 15 October, while seminal works by Irish artists over the past 50 years will be shown in an exhibition selected by writers and curators Bruce Arnold, Dorothy Walker, Oliver Dowling, Medb Ruane and Caoimhin MacGiolla Leith. An exhibition of prints by Irish-born artist Tim Mara, marking a donation of a selection of his work to the Museum, can be seen from 7 April to 21 June.
Works by the five artists shortlisted for the Glen Dimplex Artists Award will be exhibited from 20 April to 18 June, with the award being made towards the end of that period. Following the success of the 1999 project, Dorothy Cross’s Ghost Ship, the Nissan Art Project for the Millennium will be selected in March and realised between September and December.
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Shamiana: Mughal Textiles (26 October – February 2001) comprises some 20 textile panels inspired largely by the magnificent collection of Mughal painting held by the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. The exhibition is part of a collaborative project between the Museum’s Education and Community Department and the V & A.
The Collection
The Museum’s rapidly growing Collection will continue to be shown throughout the First Floor West Galleries and the Gordon Lambert Galleries in
2000. The current Lifescapes exhibition continues until 7 April and Half Dust … until 5 June. The Maire and Maurice Foley Loan (16 June – 1 October), comprising works by artists active in Ireland in the 1970s, ‘80s and ‘90s, will be shown to coincide with the first showing at the Museum of Shane Cullen’s Fragmens Sur Les Institutions Republicanes IV, recreating messages smuggled out of prisons in Northern Ireland.
Other plans include a more focussed look at some of the artists in the
Musgrave-Kinley Outsider Collection (until 17 May) and, from 10 May to September, an exhibition from a major donation of 150 Pan-American prints, recently donated by Canton Y Papel de Mexico, part of the Smurfit Group. Works from the George and Maura McClelland Collection, of Irish and especially Northern Irish, paintings, sculpture and works on paper, recently loaned to the Museum, go on show from 16 September to January 2001.
Education and Community
Over the past nine years, an extensive range of programmes has been developed at the Museum with the intention of creating and increasing access to the visual arts, as well as engagement in their meaning and practice. The 2000 programme continues to operate on many levels – in research projects in association with the Department of Education and Science, with community-based programmes within the local catchment area and with the
general public in a gallery-based initiative through the provision of Explorer 1.
Following the Come to the Edge exhibition, curated by St Michael’s Parish
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Active Retirement Association, Inchicore, the group continues its involvement with the Museum in a transitional research project exploring older people as adult learners, co-funded under the European Socrates programme.
This year the programme develops its international links in Austria, Sweden, Portugal and the UK through a series of seminars on art education in Museums. During the May Festival Bealtaine, co-ordinated by Age & Opportunity, IMMA hosts a seminar to explore key findings of this research in the Irish context.
For the primary school sector, Breaking the Cycle, a research project aimed at combating education disadvantage being carried out in partnership with
the Department of Education and Science, enters its third year, while children
from St Thomas’s Junior School in Jobstown, Tallaght, and from St Lawrence O’Toole’s, Seville Place, Dublin, will be working with artists exploring the Museum’s Collection.
Explorer 1, the interactive programme for family audiences, continues in the Museum’s galleries every Sunday from February to the end of July and
Focus On . . . continues to provide an introduction to the Museum for a variety of community groups, including youth and afterschool groups, people with learning and physical disabilities, women’s and older people’s groups.
Artists’ Work Programme
The Artists’ Work Programme, the Museum’s studio/residency programme, has hosted 85 artists since its inception in 1994. The Work Programme operates in eight studio spaces in renovated coach houses, adjacent to the main Museum building. There are also three self-contained apartments, and five spacious bedrooms in the recently restored Flanker Building, providing living accommodation for the studios. During 2000 artists from Ireland, the UK, South Africa, Japan, New Zealand, Germany, Nigeria, USA, Bangladesh and Finland are participating in the programme.
The Work Programme is open to artists in all disciplines and of all nationalities. Artists participating in the programme make themselves as available as possible to meet with visitors to the Museum, providing access
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to the process of making art and giving the public an additional layer of experience to that available in the Museum’s galleries. A series of slide talks, studio visits, panel discussions and open days are organised around the residencies, all of which are free and open to the public.
The National Programme
The National Programme is designed to make the Museum’s assets, skills and resources available to centres outside Dublin. Through the lending of exhibitions and individual works, and the development of collaborative projects with other organisations, the National Programme establishes the Museum as inclusive, accessible and national.
During 2000 the National Programme will develop a major cross-border curatorial project involving a number of partner organisations. As part of this process eight women from Co Leitrim will join eight women from Co Fermanagh to explore the collection with a view to making an exhibition which will go on display in Carrick-on-Shannon, Co Leitrim, and Enniskillen, Co Fermanagh, between September and December 2000.
In January 2000 two portfolios of prints from the Weltkunst Collection – Other Men’s Flowers and the London Group Portfolio – go on display in Sligo Art Gallery, while somebodies, a selection of works from the Collection curated by young people from Waterford, Meath, Cavan and Dublin, travels to the Toradh Gallery in Duleek, Co Meath.
Projects in Ballinakill, Co Laois, North Tipperary, Co Wicklow, Kilkenny and at a number of festivals are also planned.
For further information please contact Philomena Byrne or Onagh Carolan at
Tel : +353 1 612 9900, Fax : +353 1 612 9999
25 January 2000