IMMA / RHK Dublin

[johnglas]

What art? (Couldn't help myself!)
I hope the original doors haven't ended up in a skip, before they're ordered to be reinstated. If they have, then the DCC paddy-wagons should be sirening their way along to Kilmainham. The one thing you can say about arts administration/management is that it doesn't exist; this will have been a panic reaction by one permanently near-hysterical 'administrator' whose idea of 'heritage' goes back no further than the last panic. What's a pair of 17thC doors? This is for CONTEMPORARY arts! The only things (apart from the complex irtself) worth seeing are the former chapel and the dining hall, and they're normally kept locked; shame that's where the art is.

[StephenC]

Its worth stating that the "original" doors may actually NOT be 17thC or whatever but could well have been put up in 1982. In fact they look pretty mundane. Notwithstanding that, aluminium! Are they for real!

[Paul Clerkin]

Originally Posted by StephenC

Its worth stating that the "original" doors may actually NOT be 17thC or whatever but could well have been put up in 1982. In fact they look pretty mundane. Notwithstanding that, aluminium! Are they for real!

exactly stephen
it's highly unlikely they are original in the true sense of the word - but the new additions are quite crude

[gunter]

Originally Posted by foremanjoe

I wish you people would lay off IMMA.

And I wish IMMA would stop giving you people more ammo.

I'm in a horrible position here.

I was hoping that you IMMA-haters would have stopped visiting there by now, but you seem to love going back there just to pick holes in it. I wish I could record a video of some of you walking around the place scoffing to yourselves, and that's without even looking at the art!

It's on my route, there's nothing I can do about it

As for visitor numbers and catching gunter on video tape, . . . . . shouldn't be too difficult, I'd be the one there!

IMMA-haters! ! come on now foremanjoe, that's a bit immature. Nobody around here hates IMMA, it's more a matter of pity and anyway the real villains of the piece are not IMMA, but the OPW. They're the one that creamed off the windfall profits from the sale of the former RHK lands on Military Road (in partnership with Eircom) without ploughing anything back into Kilmainham, they're the ones that put in the vast surface carpark at the RHK using the blatant lie that the visitor numbers required it, and they're the ones that now lease half the carpark, on a nod and a wink basis, to their buddies in Eircom, whose brand new office block seems to be about 200 car park spaces short of the level of demand etc. etc.

For the record, I was minding my own business (more or less) when I, unexpectedly, encountered your appalling aluminium doors.

Originally Posted by StephenC

Its worth stating that the "original" doors may actually NOT be 17thC or whatever . . .

Don't know for sure, but they were heavy timber doors and they had lots of metal studs and brackets holding them together, which would suggest that they've been there a long time.

[foremanjoe]

Originally Posted by gunter

IMMA-haters! ! come on now foremanjoe, that's a bit immature.

Love it.
Tip o' the cap to you good sir.

[GrahamH]

Nothing surprises me anymore. What on earth is going on? We all know Kilmainham is a world unto itself out there in the wilds (), but even by its wayward standards this development takes the biscuit. I can't imagine that anything other than heavy-handed security is dictating these events. Surely fire standards do not require measures of this calibre for external doors? (and for which, in any event, Protected Structures are exempt).

In hindsight, the doors were installed in the south range earlier in the year, but those hideous setts proved too much of a distraction at the time to notice. For fear of a clout from foremanjoe, I shall say no more on the matter, only than at the launch of John McCullen's new book on the Park, held in RHK last week, there was universal agreement as to just how disagreeable they are.




The same smart paths could easily have been laid across a compacted earth and gravel surface.




William Robinson's calp and sandstone arcades are one of the express survivors of the original 17th century exterior fabric.












Only a fragment of its closest equivalent survives at Dublin Castle. In this case, the calp and sandstone arcade of the Upper Yard's south-western range (as also modified by Master of The Infill, Francis Johnston), was in effect designed by William Robinson, but in reality executed by Thomas Burgh as his successor as Surveyor General in 1712.



Conversely, what parts that were built by Robinson no longer survive, so we must look to the Royal Hospital for the genuine article.

[missarchi]

Originally Posted by GrahamH

. I can't imagine that anything other than heavy-handed security is dictating these events. [/IMG]

they keep the shams in there... Can't remember one piece of x I would like to have on the mantle piece

[gunter]

Magnificent photographs Graham, as always.

You're never sure with IMMA whether the irony is intentional. Going to a museum to see the cobblestones lifted from actual Dublin streets is a case in point.

Thanks to foremanjoe's paranoia about archiseekers showing up at IMMA and not carrying themselves with the appropriate level of deference, we got no advance notice of an event there on 7 November, with the pertinent title of ''What is modern art?''

So near, and yet so far

Still, you miss one bus and another one comes along.

Public Forum on Amalgamation
Date: Wednesday 18 November 2009

Venue: Irish Museum of Modern Art

A public forum on the amalgamation of the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Ireland and the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork, announced by the Government in 2008, will be held at the Irish Museum of Modern Art on Wednesday 18 November. The event is being organised by IMMA both as a means of exploring further the possible impact of the decision on the Museum and in response to the many queries which IMMA has received on the subject from visitors, artists, collectors and other stakeholders.

The forum aims to provide a cross section of perspectives on the amalgamation, both for and against, from a wide-ranging panel of speakers. In addition to drawing together the various strands of opinion on the issue, it will also make available the experience of international colleagues who have operated within, or been involved in setting up, an amalgamated structure and will give interested parties within Ireland the opportunity to contribute to the debate.

Programme

Date: Wednesday 18 November 2009

9.30 Participants arrive. Tea/coffee available

10.00 Chair, Terry Prone welcoming address

10.05 Eoin McGonigal, Chairperson, IMMA.

10.15 Two international directors speak of their personal experience of
operating within/setting up an amalgamated structure

Michael Houlihan, Director General, National Museum Wales

Sune Nordgren, Founding Director of the National Museum of Art,
Architecture and Design, Oslo, currently Project Manager at the Kivik Art
Centre and the Museum Vandalorum in Sweden.

11.00 Noel Kelly, Director, Visual Artists Ireland.
Jacinta Lynch, Director, Broadstone Studios
Patrick T Murphy, Director, Royal Hibernian Academy

11.30 Tea/coffee

11.50 Jim Power, economist
Pat Cooke, Director, School of Art History and Cultural Policy, University
College Dublin

12.20 Mike Fitzpatrick, Head of School, Limerick School of Art and Design.
Brian Fay, artist, lecturer and member of IMMA’s Artists’ Panel

12.40 Lunch (including time for media interviews)

13.45 Anthony Cronin, writer and Saoi of Aosdána

13.55 Hughie O’Donoghue, artist
Jaki Irvine, artist
Jerome Ó Drisceoil, Director, Green on Red Gallery

14.25 Enrique Juncosa, Director, IMMA.

14.40 Tea/coffee

15.00 Round table discussions (or general open questions and answers)

15.30 Feedback from round tables

16.00 Chair draws forum to a close, with summary of conclusions

What do we think? Is an amalgamation the way to go?

The Crawford has the location, the National Gallery has the pictures, and IMMA has the car park . . . . it could work