Glucksman Ireland House presents
Dr. Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch discusses the visual arts and Irish identity
Thursday, October 29th at 7pm
at Glucksman Ireland House NYU
Dr. Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch, recently retired Curator of Irish Art at the National Gallery in Ireland, discusses how the visual arts in Ireland have shaped, and been shaped by, the shifting issues of Irish national identity. Until recently, little attention was paid to the role of art in constructing the story of the Irish nation.
Bhreathnach-Lynch’s wide-ranging research opens up the subject by providing a fresh interdisciplinary approach to analyzing individual works. A deeper investigation into the context in which a work was produced reveals much about the aspirations and ideological ambitions of artists, those commissioning works, and the viewing public. The study of such diverse topics as the representation of the Irish peasant, the hidden tensions in setting up a national gallery for Ireland, the erecting of political monuments, Church art, West of Ireland landscape painting, and the difference in nationalistic fervor among artists as diverse as Albert G. Power and Jack B. Yeats unveil fascinating testimony about Ireland’s collective national needs and its constructs of identity.