National Gallery of Ireland Ends 19 July 2026 By Luke Gibbons W.B. Yeats’s The works of William Blake (1893), edited with Edwin J. Ellis, did much to establish the reputation of the great Romantic poet/artist, all but neglected until then. Yeats went a step further and sought to establish Blake’s Irish ancestry through a putative … Read more
National Gallery of Ireland Ends October 2026; free admission By Donal Fallon Last April I went on a sort of Beckett pilgrimage across Paris. There was Montparnasse Cemetery, smaller but no less rewarding than the celebrated Père Lachaise. Simone de Beauvoir and Serge Gainsbourg may bring more visitors to Montparnasse, but there was plenty of … Read more
St Comgall’s School, Falls Road, Belfast www.wherethetroublesbegan.com By Donal Fallon In August 1969, the Falls Road was described to readers of the New York Times: ‘At best, this is a dim Victorian district of redbrick row houses, second-class stores, cheap cafes and dowdy pubs. Today, the streets were littered with glass, stones and bricks. Shops, … Read more
National Gallery of Ireland, Beir Wing, Rooms 6–10 Until 22 February 2026 By Donal Fallon In the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Ireland, a work by the artist Michael Farrell shows a meeting of James Joyce and Pablo Picasso at the famed Café de Flore in Paris. The idea of the two regulars … Read more
Ulster Museum, Gallery 4 By Donal Fallon The renaming of Temple Bar’s Gallery of Photography as Photo Museum Ireland in 2022 was a statement of intent. The name adopted reflected its role as Ireland’s national centre for contemporary photography, but it was also a decision looking towards the future and the ultimate aspiration of a … Read more