BITE-SIZED HISTORY
Published in Issue 5 (September/October 2023), Volume 31BY DONAL FALLON
A MUSEUM FOR HARRY CLARKE
Above: The offending panel six— O’Flaherty’s Mr Gilhooley and AE’s Deirdre— of Harry Clarke’s eight-panel ‘Geneva Window’. (Wolfsonian Museum)
Good news for Dublin’s Parnell Square: Dublin City Council is proposing a museum to stained-glass artist Harry Clarke. Just around the corner from the site of his studio on North Frederick Street, the museum would be located in the same building as the Chapter One restaurant. Clarke’s work is to be found in collections internationally, with the celebrated ‘Geneva Window’ displayed in the Wolfsonian Museum in Miami. Commissioned (and later rejected) by the Free State government, it honoured Irish writers such as James Joyce, Liam O’Flaherty, AE and J.M. Synge. With the loss of the Dublin Writers Museum, a space dedicated to Harry Clarke would certainly be a welcome addition to the area. (See History Ireland 19.2, March/April 2011, pp 34–5.)
SHAY ELLIOTT REMEMBERED
The first Irishman to win a stage in the Tour de France and wear the famed yellow jersey, Shay Elliott was born in Crumlin in 1934. Just 36 years of age at the time of his passing, he remains a legend of cycling. Thanks to a proposal from film-maker Martin Dwan, who made a documentary film exploring Elliott’s life and influence, a new plaque has been unveiled on his childhood home at Old County Road in Crumlin. Sports journalist and former professional cyclist Paul Kimmage told the crowd (many of whom, fittingly, arrived by bicycle) that Elliott was ‘the pioneer. Our great adventurer. The man who planted the flag on the summit of our dreams.’
IRISH WAKE MUSEUM
Recently, Museum Eye explored the Bishop’s Palace in Waterford. The city has an unrivalled diversity of museum experiences, spanning everything from its Viking origins to the Museum of Time. Now Ireland’s oldest city has another museum to add to its impressive collection: the Irish Wake Museum, located at the former Dean John Collyn’s Almshouse, which explores changing Irish customs around death and grieving. Speaking of the new museum, Director of Waterford Treasures Eamonn McEneaney said that ‘the Irish Wake is one of the iconic parts of our national culture and visitors will get to experience a sense of this at the Irish Wake Museum as we trace the customs, traditions and superstitions associated with death from the earliest times to the twentieth century’.
LUCIA JOYCE
Visitors to the Joyce family grave in Zurich will notice a new addition—a memorial stone to Lucia Joyce, dancer and artist, daughter of James Joyce and Nora Barnacle. There has been renewed interest in her story in recent times, including musician Joseph Chester’s recent album Lucia for Guitar and Strings. President Michael D. Higgins had made a commitment to the late Stephen Joyce that some kind of commemorative marker to her would be added at the site. Lucia spent the later decades of her life in St Andrew’s Hospital in Northampton and was buried in Kingsthorpe cemetery upon her death in 1982. In the words of President Higgins, ‘of all of the women who impacted on Joyce, it is perhaps his daughter Lucia and her artistic genius that has needed to be reclaimed, however late in the day’.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK
It’s an unusual day in GAA headquarters when the sound of Frank Sinatra honours a victorious side, but so it was for the first time ever with New York claiming a historic first All-Ireland Junior Football title on 16 July 2023. The New York GAA emerged in late 1914, and there are currently 41 clubs affiliated to it. The history of the game in the city is well examined in Fergus Hanna’s The history of the GAA in New York, and the future seems positive too, with a €500,000 government grant announced earlier this year towards Gaelic Park in the Bronx.
EUROPA NOSTRA
Congratulations to the Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) on winning at the Europa Nostra awards in the category of Citizen Engagement and Awareness-raising. The museum’s centenary exhibition on Brendan Behan, curated by Pat McCabe, recently featured in History Ireland. In announcing the award, the jury commented that ‘this community museum in Dublin, a UNESCO City of Literature, has established itself as a strong advocate for engagement and inclusivity. It has reached a significant number of participants, including 80,000 listeners for their podcast and 7,500 visitors from schools.’ This is the second Europa Nostra award for Dublin in recent years, with 14 Henrietta Street winning an award in 2020.
COLLINS IN LONDON
Barnsbury Hall in London’s Islington was where a young Michael Collins was sworn into the oath-bound Irish Republican Brotherhood by Sam Maguire. Islington Council has just unveiled a plaque on the building. It is one of several sites of the Irish revolution that hide in plain sight there, like the German Gymnasium at King’s Cross where the Irish Volunteers trained and drilled. Martin Fraser, the Irish ambassador to the UK, noted that ‘it is important to recognise those key moments in our history and the strong contribution of our Irish community here in London’.
