Literary Lives: Portraits from the Crawford Art Gallery and Abbey Theatre, Ireland
September 4—December 5, 2010
selected images
(click to enlarge) >>
Over the last several centuries, Irish artists have produced compelling and revealing portraits of Irish writers. Many of these portraits—paintings, sculptures, and photographs—were either commissioned or purchased by various Irish national collections. This exhibition comprises more than fifty of the finest examples from two of the most significant of these collections, the Crawford Art Gallery in Cork and the Abbey Theatre in Dublin. Literary Lives combines visual portraiture with a wide range of rare books, manuscripts, letters, illustrations, and objects selected from Boston College's Burns Library to explore questions about the literary life, both personal and professional, and to reveal how different materials offer windows to different aspects of that life.
Organized by the Crawford Art Gallery, Cork, and the McMullen Museum, in collaboration with the Irish Studies Faculty and the Burns Library at Boston College, Literary Lives has been co-curated by Peter Murray, Anne Boddaert, Marjorie Howes, Diana Larsen, and Robert Savage. It is underwritten by Culture Ireland, Boston College, and the Patrons of the McMullen Museum.
Underwritten in part by
