Museum Stories: Collins Barracks and Natural History

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Friday March 28, 2008 20:32

by C Murray

Art Gallery and Legislation (2003)

In this month's 'Irish Art Review', which is available online (it's a tenner a pop in the
Newsagents) the editor discusses the current exhibition in Collin's Barracks and asks
the question: 'Should not the Irish State give up to 50% of the pieces back, because
they are colonial plunder' ?

Its brief and I did not bring my copy, thus I cannot quote him verbatim..
The Natural History Museum remains closed since the staircase collapse last
year, with rumblings in the media that the Senate will be expanded in there and
kids are therefore limited in free access to their heritage, learning and study places.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76354

Cover Story

Currently Minister Brennan Has upped funding to Galleries to allow for non-traditional
opening hours, but this is set against the problems in OPW and the National Museum
in relation to archive and database issues.

http://www.savetara.com/articles/2008/032008_problems.html
http://www.museum.ie/events/details_events.asp?eventid=..._id=0

The Ann Madden Link is included because it makes mention of the exhibitions
and gallery work of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and other small groups who
brought modern art to Ireland against a backround of Cultural repression in the
De Valera era, where visual Propaganda in the creation of a nation was more
important than access and funding.

The current government partners legislated for the contentious Arts Act (2003)
which allowed the State an overweening control and say in what is funded
and actually is the first time that this level of interference in the independence
of artistic expression has been allowed since the De V era.

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/76354

At the moment the Canadian Government is making similar moves
on writing expression and in broadcast (will add in link)

Irish Arts Review: http://www.irishartsreview.com/
Brian Maguire on poverty and alienation:- http://www.irishartsreview.com/html/Vol25-no1/Maguire/M...e.htm

The National Botanic Gardens are running an excellent free Spring Trail for Kids,
which is a treasure hunt involving Roman gods and naming plants, they get
a packet of saved seeds, lots of excerise and a lollipop at the end and must
tour the whole gardens to fill out their forms- they like to hear about Cook's legacy
in the National Botanic Gardens, where many of the plants were brought in as
a result of the colonial adventures currently causing controversy at Collins!

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Comments (2 of 2)

by C.

Fri Mar 28, 2008 20:43

http://www.botanicgardens.ie

Ireland's colonial tradition

Sat Mar 29, 2008 19:54

This is an excerpt from the editor's letter at the Irish Art Review:

'The exotic ethnographical collection in the National Museum of Ireland, part of which was
brought back from the Pacific with Captain Cook in the eighteenth century is quite
literally a hidden treasure. Some of the several thousand items , including the Jade Tiki
on the front cover, rare masks, musical instruments, spears and beautifully carved figures
were last exhibited in 1990 and before that in 1978. But as Peter Somerville Large reports,
the collection is now carefully catalogued and stored away from public view waiting
reseurrection in a promised new building at Collin's Barracks, would it not be an enlightened
policy for the government to return at least half the collection to those communities
in the Pacific from whence they came?"

for a story on Blackwater and the building of a museum from god knows what funding:

http://nyc.indymedia.org/en/2007/10/91886.html (Don Fisher and San Francisco)

(of course we are nothing to do with illegal war and ill-gotten gains being
a declared neutral state and not at all associated with neo-colonialism)

The ACP has suffered it's resources theft and now accuses the neo-liberal policies
of corporate EU of effecting environmental sustainability and food supply through
aggressive trade agreements and buying of patents.
ACP accuses the EU of breaching the 2000 Contonou Agreement, we just lock up
illeagals...

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/84929 (check out links)

Bi-laterals are also attacking indigenous ways of life in the Americas;

http://www.indymedia.ie/article/83814

NBG has an interesting collection of shrunken heads and an extensive herbarium
our botanists go to Belize to collect and preserve rare orchids, due to global warming
and intensive farming. It's an interesting place for kids to learn about colonial
tradition and species preservation and should be funded alone for the restoration
works on the Curvilinear range and Palm Houses.

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Museum Stories: Collins Barracks and Natural History

Comments (2 of 2)