The Newly Renovated Provost’s House Stables -New Home to the Trinity Irish Art Research Centre Officially Launched
Posted on: 13 June 2008
Painter Louis le Brocquy and Photographer Jacqueline O’Brien Open Provost’s House Stables
The recently renovated Provost’s House Stables, new home to the Trinity Irish Art Research Centre (TRIARC), was officially opened at Trinity College by painter Louis le Brocquy and photographer, Jacqueline O’Brien this week.
The Trinity Irish Art Research Centre was established to promote specialist education and research in Irish visual culture. Commenting on the significance of the academic research centre, TRIARC Director, Yvonne Scott says: “Irish art has a long and venerable history stretching back several millennia from the ancient carvings at Newgrange to the renaissance of visual art in the 20th century. TRIARC was established in response to the unprecedented growth of interest in Irish art, both nationally and internationally, and the consequent demand for well-qualified graduates, research publications and educational courses at all levels in this field”.
TRIARC research and teaching activities are now housed in the beautifully renovated stables, situated adjacent to the Provost’s House which were originally designed by Frederick Darley junior in 1841 and recently converted by the award winning architects, O’Donnell+Tuomey. The Provost’s House Stables represent an excellent example of the successful translation of an existing building to new, and equally practical purposes while retaining many of the stables’ original features, a hay-loft has been transformed into a reading room, a carriage house has been converted into a seminar room and horse stalls into study carrels.
Commenting on the occasion of the official opening of the new building, TCD Provost, Dr John Hegarty says: “The Trinity Irish Art Research Centre has found a perfect home in the Provost’s Stables. The stables are an integral part of the complex of buildings and curtilage of the 18th century Provost’s House. Through their sensitive and creative transformation into an art research centre, the stables block has been restored once more to an exciting hub of activity in the heart of the city very much in harmony with the heritage of the Provost’s House and the innovative culture of the College.”
TRIARC builds on the established expertise, courses, and facilities offered by TCD’s History of Art Department in the School of Histories and Humanities, providing an expanded range of courses on Irish art and architecture aimed at all levels, including a taught Masters, the M.Phil in Irish Art History, the only postgraduate degree of its kind, a core aspect of which is the exploration of the concept of ‘Irishness’.
TRIARC also has responsibility for the largest image archive of Irish art in the world, including the Crookshank-Glin collection of 17th to early 20th century painting, and the Stalley and Rae collections of medieval art and architecture, which were donated to the College. The aim is to develop the visual archive to embrace all periods in Irish art and it is currently being expanded to include modern and contemporary Irish art.TRIARC is engaged in an ambitious digitisation project in order to make all of this information and future collections publicly available on the web. The archive is, therefore, set to become an essential point of departure for anybody conducting serious research into the art of the period.
The academic research centre also promotes and facilitates the publication of academic research on visual culture in, and related to, Ireland. Marking the occasion of the official launch of TRIARC’s new home, it hosted the fourth Long Room Hub’s Lewis Glucksman Memorial Symposium on the subject of From the Horse’s Mouth – the significance of the artist’s statement, featuring Stephen Bann, Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol along with leading Irish contemporary artists, Dorothy Cross and Hughie O’Donoghue.
The concept of the symposium was to showcase the type of work that is undertaken by TRIARC, in exploring art history in an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural context. Professor Stephen Bann’s talk addressed the art-historical significance of what artists say about their work and represented a re-evaluation of recent debates, presented as a lively and insightful exploration of a vital contemporary issue in the discipline. In his presentation, entitled, ‘Scrambled reception and criticism over the shoulder’ he drew on his experience as an art historian and art critic, to consider the challenges of interpreting the work of artists, both traditional and contemporary.
Two very different, but equally significant, contemporary artists from Ireland also talked about how their respective ideas were developed and brought to life. Dorothy Cross works mainly with sculpture and new media. Often provocative, much of her oeuvre explores the natural sciences, frequently drawing on opera to introduce sound into her complex and intriguing work. Hughie O’Donoghue’s sensitive paintings draw on history, memory and imagination to consider the human condition, often in times of conflict and war, drawing on memorabilia, particularly old photographs.
The Lewis Glucksman Memorial Symposium hosted by TRIARC was supported by the Trinity Long Room Hub, the research institute for the arts and humanities at TCD.
Following the Symposium, there was a reception and an official launch of the building by Jacqueline O’Brien and Louis le Brocquy. A sculpture by Michael Warren was unveiled at the same time. This work, entitled Go Deo: homage to Samuel Beckett (2006), commemorates the centenary of Beckett’s birth, and was donated by David Arnold.
A book, The Provost’s House Stables, edited by Yvonne Scott and Rachel Moss, was also produced to mark the event and provides information on the Stables and demonstrates the type and range of scholarship in which TRIARC is engaged.
Notes to the editor:
1.About the Trinity Irish Art Research Centre
The Trinity Irish Art Research Centre was established in 2003 to promote specialist education and research in Irish visual culture.
Activities include:
– a taught masters, the M.Phil. in Irish Art History
– a research post-graduate programme leading to M.Litt and PhD;
– teaching to undergraduate students of Art History, and Irish Studies
– programme of lectures for the general public
– seminars, symposia and conferences on Irish art
– publications on Irish art history
– research projects
Research projects
Various research projects are in progress under the auspices of TRIARC and the History of Art Department, to which it belongs. A major project, supported by funding from the Getty Foundation, is the cataloguing and digitisation of a substantial visual archive, comprising the Crookshank-Glin, Stalley, and Edwin Rae collections of photographic images.
‘Art, Ireland and Migration’ is an emerging project to evaluate the relationship between visual themes and methods, and the impact of emigration and immigration. This project has been supported by Tony and Clare White, who have sponsored the White Fellowship in Irish Art History. Two scholars are currently researching under this theme, and two further scholarships will be awarded over the next two years under this programme.
2. Architects, O’Donnell +Tuomey achieved a ‘special mention’ at the AAI Awards 2008 for their sensitive restoration of the Provost’ House Stables.
3. About the Visual Archive
The Crookshank-Glin collection, containing material collected by the doyens of Irish art history, Professor Anne Crookshank and Desmond Fitzgerald, Knight of Glin, comprises an estimated 35,000 images of paintings by more than a thousand Irish artists from the 16th to the early 20th centuries. The Stalley and Rae archives are collections of unique photographic records of Irish medieval architecture and sculpture, with some related material, and together comprise more than 25,000 images of about 600 different locations. Professor Roger Stalley, is Professor of History of Art at Trinity College and the founder of the Irish Art Research Centre. Professor Edwin Rae was late of University of Illinois Champagne-Urbana.
4. About the Symposium Speakers
Stephen Bann is Professor of History of Art at the University of Bristol, and a Fellow of the British Academy. He was President of CIHA (Comité international d’histoire de l’art) from 2000 to 2004. Over the years, he has published Parallel Lines: Printmakers, Painters and Photographers in 19th century France (2001), Jannis Kounellis (2003) and Ways around Modernism (2007); he has also edited The Reception of Walter Pater in Europe (2004), and The Coral Mind: Adrian Stokes’s engagement with Architecture, Art History, Criticism and Psychoanalysis (2007).