This conference at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts & History brought together artists, educators, curators and activists to interrogate the role of artists in museums, consider the impact of artists’ residencies and explore how socially engaged art and other contemporary artist engagements can be fostered as a core strand in the work of the museum.
The conference, which took place on 21 May 2024, was part of the Museum’s programme of events at the culmination of artist Anthony Haughey’s residency and his exhibition, we make our own histories, on display at Collins Barracks from 28 February to 5 August 2024.
Speakers included the American artist, writer and educator Gregory Sholette, the National Museum’s Artist in Residence 2021 – 24 Anthony Haughey and Decade of Centenaries Artist in Residence, Beyond 2022 Mairéad McClean.
Watch the Museum's Director Lynn Scarff give her opening address and Gregory Sholette's Keynote presentation - Trouble in Museum Land.
Programme
9am
Coffee and registration
9.30am
Artist’s tour of the we make our own histories exhibition
with Anthony Haughey, Decade of Centenaries Artist-in-Residence, National Museum of Ireland
10.15am
Welcome with Lynn Scarff, Director, National Museum of Ireland
10.30am
Keynote Address: Trouble in Museum Land
Gregory Sholette, Artist, writer and educator
11.15am
Coffee Break
11.45am
Panel discussion: Activist, Artist, Agitator?
Éimear O'Connor, Head of Collections, National Museum of Ireland
Anthony Haughey, Decade of Centenaries Artist in Residence, National Museum of Ireland
Dónal Maguire, Keeper, National Museum of Ireland
Mairéad McClean, Decade of Centenaries Artist in Residence, Beyond 2022
Chair: Sharon Heal, Director, Museums Association UK
12.30pm
Reflection:
Martin Drury, Artist, activist, advocate, and writer
12.45pm
Lunch Break
2pm
Panel discussion: The impacts of artists working in museums on museums, their visitors and their communities
Aoife O’Brien, Curator, National Museum of Ireland
Lauretta Igbosonu, Participant in National Museum Residency
Leina Ibnouf, Participant in National Museum Residency
Agrippa Njanina, Community Engagement Officer, National Museums Northern Ireland
Chair: Damien McGlynn, Director, Create National Development Agency for Collaborative Arts
2.45pm
Break
3pm
Panel Discussion: What does best practice look like and what do museums need to do to embed this work?
Lynn Scarff
Helen Beaumont, Education Officer, National Museum of Ireland
Gregory Sholette
Jonathan Cummins, artist, lecturer and co-curator with Maolíosa Boyle of we make our own histories
Gemma Reid, Artist and member of Quarto Collective
Janice Hough, Curator, IMMA
Chair: Gina O’Kelly, Director, Irish Museums Association
3.45pm
Closing Words
Lynn Scarff and Martin Drury
4pm
Ends
About the speakers:
Gregory Sholette is a New York-based artist, writer, teacher and activist. He is a Professor at Queens College, City University of New York (CUNY), Co-Director of Social Practice CUNY headquartered in the Center for the Humanities, Graduate Center; holds a PhD in History and Memory Studies from the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, is a graduate of the Whitney Independent Study Program in Critical Theory, and an alumni of the Center for Advanced Study of Visual Art (CASVA). His most recent book is The Art of Activism and the Activism of Art (2021).
Helen Beaumont is Education & Outreach Officer at the National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Art and History, Collins Barracks. As an educator in museums, galleries and schools, she has extensive experience of working with artists in a range of contexts, including long term artist residencies with students, young people and community groups, amongst others. Most recently she was involved in project managing the Museum’s Decade of Centenaries Artist’s Residency with socially engaged artist Anthony Haughey from 2021 – 2024.
She is a graduate of the MA in Arts Management and Cultural Policy, UCD. Before joining the Museum, she worked for eight years as a second level art teacher in Dublin and London and in the Education Department of the National Gallery of Ireland.
Jonathan Cummins is an artist, curator and lecturer at Belfast School of Art School, Ulster University. He has exhibited at EVA Limerick, Void Derry, Dublin City Gallery The Hugh Lane, NCAD Gallery Dublin, Centre Culturel Irlandais Paris, Rencontres Internationales and other locations and events. His curating projects, mostly in partnership with curator Maolíosa Boyle, include exhibitions with artists Andrei Molodkin, Katrina Palmer, Brian Maguire, Santiago Sierra (co-curated with Sara Greavu), Phil Collins, John Gerrard, Hiraki Sawa and Eija-Liisa Ahtila. He holds a Master of Fine Art from the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) and a PhD from the Centre for Socially Engaged Practice-Based Research at Technological University Dublin (TUD). He is co-curator, with Maolíosa Boyle, of we make our own histories, Anthony Haughey’s current exhibition at National Museum of Ireland, and the culmination of Haughey’s Decade of Centenaries residency at the Museum.
Martin Drury, practitioner and policy-maker for 45 years, trained and worked as a teacher of English before becoming variously Arts Education Officer (Sligo/Leitrim); Artistic Director of TEAM Educational Theatre Co; Education Officer of the Arts Council; Founding Director, The Ark, A Cultural Centre for Children; Arts Director & Strategic Development Director at the Arts Council. His directing CV includes 20+ productions for the Abbey, Druid, Opera Theatre Company, Second Age, The Ark, Barnstorm and TEAM. He is a former board member of the Ireland Funds, of Music Generation and of Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts, and a former Honorary Fellow in Psychology at UCD. He has been active in shaping cultural policy through membership of key committees and working groups and he has researched, written and edited numerous reports and studies in the field of the arts, especially in the contexts of education and young people. He is currently writing The Arts, the State and Young People: Cultural Policy, Provision and Practice (1920-2020).
Anthony Haughey is a visual artist and academic, he supervises practice-based doctorates at TU Dublin where he co-founded the Centre For Socially Engaged Practice-Based Research (SEPR). His artworks and writing have been widely exhibited, collected and published in museums, galleries, archives and publications nationally and internationally. Current and recent exhibitions include: Silent City, National Gallery of Ireland; we make our own histories, National Museum of Ireland; This is What We Call Progress, Crawford Gallery, Cork; Open House, Whitworth Gallery Manchester; Assemble, a public artwork commissioned by Fingal County Council and made in collaboration with the Global Migration Collective; Citizen Nowhere / Citizen Somewhere: The Imagined Nation, Crawford Gallery, Cork and Go Down Moses, curated by Teju Cole, Museum of Contemporary Photography, Chicago. He is an editorial board member of the Routledge Journal, Photographies and he is a co-editor of the publication Socially Engaged Art Across Ireland: Contested Narratives, Places and Futures (Cork University Press, forthcoming in 2025).
Sharon Heal is the director of the UK’s Museums Association, a professional membership organisation that campaigns to promote the value of museums to society. She regularly comments on museums and cultural policy in the UK; speaks at conferences and events in the UK and internationally; and has published extensively including contributing a chapter in Museums and and Public Value (Carol A. Scott, Ashgate, 2013). Sharon’s background is in journalism, event creation and policy development. She has lectured in journalism, the history of museums and museum ethics and has judged prizes and awards including the Clore Award for Museum Learning. Sharon is the Chair of the Museum of Homelessness, a Trustee of both the Thackray Museum and the European Museum Forum.
Janice Hough curates IMMA’s Residency & Artist Programmes to support sited live/work opportunities for creative research, production, and the public dissemination of practice. Residencies are curated through various strategies such as invited, themed open calls, and partnerships & exchanges. In recent years Hough has produced sited projects and supported commissions at IMMA with artists such as Array Collective, Forerunner, Fiona Whelan & Brokentalkers, Iz Oztat, Liliane Puthod, Clodagh Emoe, Navine G. Dossos and ANU Productions. She has curated and produced numerous group and solo projects such as More Than One Maker, 2015; A Fair Land, 2016; Wilder Beings Command, 2017 and co-curated the major IMMA Collection exhibition Ghosts from the Recent Past, 2020. International partnerships have included Light Works, Syracuse NY; Grizedale Arts, UK; Kooshk Residency, Tehran, and MMCA Residency Changdong, Seoul, South Korea. Hough was a founding member of a the studio network VISIT and of Artists Studio Network Ireland. Past presentations include TransCultural Exchange Conference, Boston; Location One, New York and she regularly moderates studio discussions and open studio events at IMMA, along with third level engagements. Hough is currently a board member at Leitrim Sculpture Centre and in 2022 she curated C L O S E R with Backwater Artists’ Studios in the Lavit Gallery, Cork.
Leina Ibnouf, originally from Sudan, has been living in Ireland for more than 20 years. She works as a Sustainability Development and Educator, training individuals, community leader and organisations to thrive through the implementation of the sustainable development goals. She also works with communities to promote sustainability and social justice. Leina has a BSc in Psychology from the Open University and a MSc in Management from Smurfit Business School, UCD. She is an advocate against violence against women. Alongside her work, she is a freelance translator. Leina is interested in histories and the intergenerational impact of major events across histories.
Lauretta Igbosonu is a community leader and care worker living in Balbriggan. She is a co-founder of the Global Migration Collective together with Warsame Ali Garare and artist Anthony Haughey. The collective was initiated in 2003 in response to the precarity, hostility and negative stereotyping towards migrants who were in the process of seeking sanctuary in Ireland. Many former members lived in direct provision. Together they have produced public art interventions and performances, as well as collaborative film productions, video installations, and public discussions.
Dónal Maguire is Keeper of Art & Industry collections at the National Museum of Ireland. His Research interests are in nineteenth, twentieth and twenty-first century art. He began his career as an artist having studied painting and art history at the National College of Art and Design before completing his MPhil in art history at Trinity College and moving towards curation. From 2009-23, he was Curator of the National Gallery of Ireland’s ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art. He has published and lectured widely at a national and European level and is a contributor to the RIA Art and Architecture of Ireland. He has curated numerous exhibitions including Sarah Purser: Private Worlds (2023); Jack B. Yeats: Painting and Memory (2021); Shaping Ireland: Landscapes in Irish Art (2020); Markievicz: Portraits and Propaganda (2018); Aftermath: The War Landscapes of William Orpen (2017). He has a strong interest in the role of research in art practice and has commissioned new artworks by leading artists including Sarah Pierce, Garrett Phelan, Amanda Coogan and Alice Maher. He is currently leading the forthcoming twentieth century art and history collection displays at Collins Barracks.
Mairéad McClean's visual art practise spans film, video, sound and photography. She uses material from a diverse range of sources from found footage, historical and family archives, filmed performances and televisual media. Her work often features ordinary people as they cope with forms of control. Whether the camera follows actual events or reenactments by a performer, people are seen to challenge or circumvent authority or to improvise with their own actions. Memory, and how and why we remember has been explored in many of her experimental films. The groundwork for her most recent 16mm film, Acts of Memory, was laid during McClean's Artist in Residence with the Beyond 22 Project Team/Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland, as part of the Decade of Centenaries program at the Long Room Hub, Trinity College, Dublin. The film was project funded by the Arts Council of Ireland /An Chomhairle Ealaíon.
Damien McGlynn is Director of Create, the national development agency for collaborative arts. Create has led the development of collaborative, socially engaged arts practice across Ireland for 40 years. He is responsible for core programming, strategic and organisational development and partnerships, nationally and internationally. He has worked in the cultural sector across Ireland, the UK and Europe for more than 15 years, including working with Creative Lives, Amateo, and as part of the ARTIST ROOMS team at Tate and National Galleries of Scotland, supporting a unique touring collection of works. Damien was born in Tallaght, Dublin and studied Fine Art (Sculpture) at NCAD. He loves working with people, agonising over football and listening to all of the music.
Agrippa Njanina has over 20 years of experience working in the non-profit, education, and community sectors with current interests in decolonisation, ethics and community engagement in museums. As Assistant Curator of Inclusive Global Histories at National Museums N.I, he focuses around documentation and researching of the World Cultures collections there. Before becoming Assistant Curator, as Community Engagement Officer on the Global Voices Local Choices project at National Museums N.I; Agrippa played a vital role in coordinating and facilitating the program across six museums in Northern Ireland. Their work focused on promoting inclusivity and diversity and empowering marginalized communities, ensuring their voices are represented. As a committed advocate for inclusive practices within the museum, ethical decision-making processes and decolonization. Agrippa is a committee member of the UK Museums Association Ethics committee. He also supports the MMMV project at Queens University Belfast on its Advisory Group.
Aoife O’Brien was appointed curator for the World Cultures/ Ethnography collections at the National Museum of Ireland in November 2022. She is former curator for the Oceania collections at the National Museums of World Culture/ Världskulturmuseerna in Sweden (2017 to 2022) and has held fellowships at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Washington University in St. Louis, and the Saint Louis Art Museum.
Aoife received her Ph.D. in Anthropology/Art History from the Sainsbury Research Unit (SRU) for the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas at the University of East Anglia in England. She also holds an MA in the Arts of Africa, Oceania and the Americas from the SRU. She is part of the Advisory Group that supports the MMMV project (QUB).
Her research interests include collecting histories, visual anthropology, cross-cultural encounters, de-colonising methodologies, community collaborations, and museum ethics and care.
Éimear O’Connor is an art historian and author with extensive experience as a curator and collections manager. O’Connor joined the National Museum of Ireland as Director of Collections and Access in October 2023.
Gina O'Kelly is the director of the all-island Irish Museums Association (IMA). She is responsible for delivering the association's vision and leading its advocacy work, research, and programming in support of the museum sector. A Licentiate in Fine Arts, specialising in Visual Culture, from the University of Granada, Spain, Gina has held senior management and curatorial roles with a diverse range of cultural and contemporary art organisations across the public and private sectors. She currently sits on the board of directors of Visual Artists Ireland and of Encountering the Arts Ireland.
Gemma Reid trained as an artist, and was drawn into the world of museums by her interest in objects as an expression of individual and collective identity. At first within small local authority museums and later as a freelance practitioner, her work has centred on creative, ethical, participative approaches to public engagement in heritage. She currently works alongside her sister, Bryonie Reid, as quarto, creatively engaging people in exploring identity and memory in place. Together, they are committed to engaging with Northern Ireland in all its (often troubled) complexity. They are curious about the untold stories and quiet work for change in every community. Agreement, a collaboration with artist Amanda Dunsmore and Ulster University, is the most recent example of that intent.
Lynn Scarff, Director of the National Museum of Ireland, is an expert panellist on public engagement, environmental education, and community regeneration, A former Director and change leader at the Science Gallery Dublin, she has delivered multiple community-led programmes, including for children and young people. An advocate for the participative museum, her research focuses on museum collaborations with under-represented groups. She has authored extensively on museum and education practice and has delivered projects funded competitively by Science Foundation Ireland, the Wellcome Trust, Horizon 2020 and Creative Europe. Board memberships include the Rediscovery Centre in Ballymun.
Joe Shortt studied Fine Art and History of Art at NCAD Dublin and Ecole Superieure D’Art Visuel Geneva. He has been a secondary school teacher of art for 31 years and is Digital Learning Coordinator at Castletroy College Limerick. Joe has also lectured part time at University of Limerick in Digital Learning and works periodically in the art department in film production in Limerick.