Ireland's Great Hunger Museum

03/04/2022

The IGHM collection will be kept intact and is staying in CT, and will move to the Gaelic-American Club of Fairfield: QU.edu/ighmannouncement

05/28/2021

Immigrants
by John Behan
2001
Bronze
17" x 20" 3"
2001.4

05/26/2021

Available through the IGHM online store:
Subjects Lacking Words?: The Gray Zone of the Great Famine
by Breandán Mac Suibhne

https://quinnipiacpayments.square.site/product/famine-folios-2017/7?cs=true&cst=custom

In the time of Ireland's Great Famine, poor people were, in places, so "reduced" that they treated each other with brutal callousness. Husbands abandoned wives and children. Mothers snatched food from the hands of infants. Neighbours stole each other's rations. People even killed for food. And this callousness extended to the dead. Human bodies were dumped in mass graves or left unburied to be ravaged by dogs and pigs, rats, ravens, and gulls. There were reports too of cannibalism. In later years, some people, who themselves suffered in the 1840s, were ashamed of having failed to offer human solidarity to others in distress. Yet if there were subjects lacking words—things difficult to describe or explain—those who had been to the abyss did talk of it. Survivors of other humanitarian crises have shown human beings to be remarkably resilient. And, in the case of Ireland, there is no basis for the facile and insular notion that the Great Famine was "so deeply tragic as to be too traumatic to recall".

05/25/2021

Lest We Forget
Irish School
Oil on canvas
30 x 40 in
2012.19

The setting is a sparsely furnished traditional Irish cottage, with the hearth at the center of the home—a rural world, still hovering in
the shadow of the Great Hunger, but on the verge of change. The elderly man sits isolated from the rest of the family; his thoughts seem dark as he struggles to keep bad memories at bay.

The fiddler entertains the young woman and children; the boy and girl look enraptured, and their young mother engages, a little
flirtatiously perhaps, with the musician. The old man cannot escape the past, the fiddler attests to the vibrancy and durability of Irish culture, the young woman is modern in demeanor and outlook, and the children represent the future.

05/24/2021

Sketches in Ireland. Ardfinnan, Castle and Village, from the north, with the Knockmealdown Mountains in the distance
September 2, 1848
The Illustrated London News

Ardfinnan is a small village in County Tipperary on the River Suir. The castle was built circa 1185 to guard the river crossing at Ardfinnan.

The Knockmealdown Mountains are located on the border of County Topperary and County Waterford.

05/20/2021

All That Remains
by Jay Murphy
1995
Pastel
15.5 in. x 12.75 in.
2011.13

Born in Dublin, Murphy now lives and works in Connemara. Her landscapes have been described as a form of a modern Dindshenchas, an early Irish literary genre concerned with the “lore of places,” important for the study of Irish mythology.

In reflecting on the cultural and historical significance of places, she explores the balance between man and nature, and how nature takes over without the control of man.

05/18/2021

Maude
by Glenna Goodacre
2002
Bronze
14 in x 12 in x 11 in
2003.3

05/16/2021

A moving piece by Kieran Tuohy

National famine commemoration day.

To honour the memories of all that needlessly perished during the dark famine times and the thousands of souls that are still contained within the workhouse walls.

05/14/2021

Cottages, West of Ireland
by Paul Henry
c. 1928-30
Oil on canvas
22 in x 26 in
2012.14

05/10/2021

Rowan Gillespie discussing the inspiration behind"Statistic 1" and "Statistic 2"that are in the collection here at Ireland's Great Hunger Museum.
Thank you to the Marine Hospital & Quarantine Station Staten Island, New York for putting this together.

05/06/2021

We would like to say thank you to everyone for their amazing generosity during the 2021 Great Give! Your support helps preserve the museum's collection and legacy of the Great Hunger for future generations.
Thank You!!

05/05/2021

There is still time to participate in the 2021 Great Give. The event runs through 8PM tonight (May 5th). Thank you to everyone that has been so generous and supported Ireland's Great Hunger Museum! Every dollar makes a difference.
https://www.thegreatgive.org/organizations/ireland-s-great-hunger-museum