Subversion may
or may not have been the writer's intention, but when you consider
that many of the gripes pitted against the Irish Museum of Modern
Art centre around suggestions that the collection doesn't represent
x, y or z, the twist is patent. Certainly the current large-scale
exhibition at the Museum, the aptly titled Shifting Ground, serves
to highlight the gaps or lacks in the Irish national collection
of modern and contemporary art. Billed as intending to "present
a speculative rather than a definitive survey of Irish art..."2,
the exhibition more directly represents what the collection might
have been, and doubtless in the eyes of some, what it should have
been. If we keep Baudrillard in mind, however, a good collection
is one that is never confined or completed, neither self-defining
nor satisfactory.
As a national
cultural institution, IMMA surely has a certain responsibility in
common with its CNCI (Council of National Cultural Institutions)
siblings, namely that of living up to all that its name entails.
Most national museums occupy the position of official keeper for
a shared cultural heritage, exercised primarily through the vehicle
of collecting and displaying artifacts and secondarily through the
programming of related events. Just how this generation of heritage
translates into the modern-art-museum space is rarely a straightforward
issue. In 1991, the year IMMA opened to the public, it was outlined
that the museum had been founded to "house a collection of modern
and contemporary art"3. Nearly
ten years later, IMMA has pronounced, "the museum is not a terminus
for Art but a porous process through which meaning in Art flows
rather than comes to rest"4.
Recurrently
the official rhetoric of the Museum has revolved around notions
of 'contesting' representations, 'unfixing' values and presenting
'process'. Translated from museum ideological-speak, this implies
a deliberate intention to develop museum activities based on an
ambition to contest the canon of modern and contemporary art, all
the while focusing attention on the process of art rather than on
the product. To this end, a popular device of the temporary exhibition
programme to date has been to deploy the compare-and-contrast approach
(most typically exemplified by the positioning of Sheela-na-Gigs
within the From Beyond the Pale exhibition in 1994/95, which consisted
mostly of modern and contemporary art). Where then within this paradigm
does the traditional notion of a national collection fit? Simply
put: it doesn't. This is where the Museum finds itself, as a national
institution, contested, its own processes questioned and not simply
by cultural critics but by the passive distance of the public. IMMA,
however, is no stranger to debate.
Situated in
the splendid Royal Hospital Kilmainham, the Museum had to surmount
significant criticism launched against its chosen site, perceived
as peripheral to Dublin city centre. Much was made in the early
days of how this location represented a meeting of form and function,
a site suitably representative of the new Museum's intention to
"address the margins" and "contest perceptions of centrality." Ironically,
this location may prove closer to the capital's cultural centre
than initially imagined, as evidenced by the subsequent opening
of another key national cultural institution nearby (the National
Museum of Ireland opened its Decorative Arts and History collections
in Collins Barracks in 1997). Also redefining this supposed 'periphery'
is the close proximity of the rapidly expanding Harp development,
hugging the north side of the river Liffey, parallel to Temple Bar
though extending further westward, reaching towards IMMA. This development
has incorporated the revamping of Smithfield Square and the opening
of Ceol, now a significant visitor attraction.
So whose big
idea was it to house IMMA at the RHK? In fact, it was the same individual
who dreamed up, over two decades ago, the notion of generating a
cultural quarter in the city centre. Temple Bar was spurred into
reality by tax incentives, which forged intimate relations between
'cultural tourism', drink and commerce. Similarly, though many others
were involved, it was the decisive action of An Taoiseach, Charles
J. Haughey, in 1987 that ensured IMMA's current location. This was
despite considerable opposition at the time, as some had promoted
the development of a new building at a site along the quays, known
as 'Stack A'.
The museum's
subsequent synthesis into an operational institution was as marked
with singular decision-making as had been the question of its location.
When drawing up the internal structure for the Museum, the government
directed that it should operate as a company, with a chief executive
(director), a nonexecutive board and a nonexecutive chair. This
structure, Director Declan McGonagle has said, was necessary "in
a greenfield situation, administratively and conceptually...to have
room to maneuver, to be flexible"5. And so
it has, in effect, remained.
Since then,
IMMA has developed, alongside exhibition and collection programmes:
an Artists' Work Programme, launched in 1994; a National Programme,
formalised in 1997; and launched two annual sponsored projects,
the Glen Dimplex Awards and the Nissan Bursary. Perhaps the most
commonly applauded aspect of the Museum's output to date has been
its Education and Outreach Programme which was, in fact, up and
running even before the Museum opened its doors to the public. The
work of this programme has addressed the preconceptions of many
- both in Ireland and abroad - with regard to the implications of
outreach projects for both art practice and mechanisms of social
inclusion. A number of these projects have undermined in their wake
the condescension so rife in the art world towards what constitutes
'community' art and what it might signify (perhaps the most obvious
example is the Unspoken Truths project, begun in 19916).
 |
| image
courtesy Irish Museum of Modern Art |
So what, in
all, has IMMA come to signify as a national cultural institution,
after ten years in the business? Audience research undertaken in
1995, as part of a review commissioned by IMMA, found the casual
visitor to IMMA to be a confused and disappointed one: confused
by poor signage and disappointed by the lack of Irish art on display7.
Since then the museum has self-consciously re-invented its overall
corporate identity, overtly upped the percentage of Irish art on
display in any one year and increased exhibition space devoted to
displays from the collection. There is a currently popular aphorism
that goes along the lines of "any organization that doesn't change
puts itself in peril" 8. It is
a relentless sentiment, but eternally appropriate.
1Cited
in J. Elsner and R. Cardinal, The Cultures of Collecting, Reaction
Books, 1994.
2IMMA: Calender of Events, January to April 2001.
3IMMA: press Release, 1991.
4IMMA: strategy statement, 2000.
5Quotations taken from interview with D. McGonagle in:
N.A. Kelly, The Irish Museum of Modern Art, BA degree thesis, NCAD,
1997.
6See review of Unspoken Truths, CIRCA 64 - Ed..
7Summary of audience research findings in: N.A. Kelly,
The Creation of an Irish Visual Heritage, MA degree thesis, NCAD,
1999.
8Direct quotation from Neil Kinnock, as quoted in The
Sunday Times, January 21, 2001.
Niamh
Ann Kelly
is a writer and lecturer in Art and Design at the Dublin Institute
of Technology.
