Cultural sites hit highs for visitors
Record 3.7m toured Irish museums and galleries in 2019
THEIR doors may be shut at the moment, but the country’s key cultural institutions were thronged in 2019 with more than 3.7million visits over the year.
The record results were unveiled by Arts and Culture Minister Josepha Madigan in response to queries by the Sinn Féin TD Sorca Clarke on the breakdown of visitor numbers to each of the national cultural institutions in 2019, and to date in 2020.
Of the 3,767,158 total visits in 2019, art galleries were the most popular destination with the National Gallery entertaining 761,273 visitors.
The second most popular institution was the National Museum (505,420), which narrowly saw off the Irish Museum of Modern Art (503,904) in third place.
The Natural History Museum, known amongst Dubliners as the ‘Dead Zoo’, was fourth with 387,493, ahead of the Chester Beatty Library with 367,384 and the National Concert Hall (324,671).
Outside of Dublin the most popular institutions were Cork’s Crawford Art Gallery (265,438) and the Turlough Park – Country Life Museum with 127,127.
‘Art galleries were by far the most popular’
Early figures for 2020 indicate that cultural institutions were thriving before the general closure, with 520,329 visits being recorded in the first two non-tourism months of January and February.
While it is not possible to visit the institutions in person, they have online collections, and some are running free live events.
Along with genealogy records, books, manuscripts and official documents, you also can browse the National Library’s digital photographic archive, including the Eason Collection of nearly 3,000 images of Ireland originally created for the Irish postcard trade by Eason & Son between 1900 and 1940. And there are also upcoming live children’s craft workshops and a Zoom tour of the library’s exhibition on Irish soldiers in the First World War at nli.ie
Fans of modern art can browse Imma’s online collections, including works by Tim Robinson, Annie Leibovitz and Dorothy Cross, on imma.ie
The National Concert Hall continues its NCH Live Stream Series on Friday with Bell X1 frontman Paul Noonan, folk singer Lisa O’Neill and Irish pianist Barry Douglas performing on subsequent weeks on nch.ie
You can visit the works of Caravaggio,
Jack B Yeats and William Orpen at the National Gallery, as well as taking virtual tours, and accessing videos, podcasts and activities for children at ngi.ie
And as well as browsing exotic collections such as the Siam Exhibition, the Chester Beatty Library is offering downloadable virtual backgrounds for Zoom meetings from its vast online archive. Meanwhile, you can look up your family history, along with court and Government records at the National Archives, with such fascinating collections as the records of the Irish Women’s Suffrage and Local Government Association (1876– 1913); and Penal transportation records – Ireland to Australia, 1788–1868 at nationalarchives.ie
The National Museum’s four locations also have online exhibitions, with the Museum of Decorative Arts & History offering shows including Ib Jorgensen: A Fashion Retrospective; the Museum of Country Life with Tales of the Titanic: ‘The Cruel Sea’ and ‘Waking the Titanic’; The National History Museum displaying Irish fauna; and the Archaeology Museum showing off its Bog Bodies display at museum.ie
Finally, the Crawford Gallery in Cork has Artists’ Film International, a collaborative project featuring artists from around the world at crawfordartgallery.ie