Writing Irish Art History

• Main Author: Niamh NicGhabhann
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Department of Art History, University of Birmingham 2011-12-01
• Series: Journal of Art Historiography
• Subjects: Irish art; Ireland; TRIARC; Association of Art Historians; Circa; historiography; review
• Online Access: http://arthistoriography.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/nicghabhann.pdf

This is a short report on two events which addressed the critical historiography of Irish art, architecture and material culture, both titled ‘Writing Irish Art History’. The first was a student-led research day, with papers which challenged received strategies in the writing of Irish art, and included keynote addresses by both Professor Tom Dunne and Dr. Róisín Kennedy, and a performance by Dr. Nicholas Johnson and Nathan Gordon adapted from Samuel Beckett’s Three Dialogues from Georges Duthuit. The second event reviewed here was a session at the 2011 Association of Art Historians’ Annual Conference at Warwick, which brought together several scholars who contributed close readings of individual key texts and documents towards a critical investigation of the historiography of Irish art, and queried the categories of Irish art and its institutional implications. These events are placed in the context of the absence or presence of the debate on historiographical practices relating to Irish art history over the past decade.