“Looking at the Stars”: Irish Art at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art

Presented by Raclin Murphy Museum of Art

The Raclin Murphy Museum of Art presents “Looking at the Stars”: Irish Art at the University of Notre Dame. With the recent gift of modern paintings by artists such as Jack B. Yeats (1871-1957), Roderic O’Conor (1860-1940), and Mary Swanzy (1882-1978), among others, from the Donald and Marilyn Keough Family, the University of Notre Dame has laid a solid foundation on which to build a rich collection of Irish art that will inspire audiences the world over. This is the premier examination of many works from the Keough gift as well as several other significant collections of Irish Art. Taken together, the collections combine to create a landmark exhibition at the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art.

The exhibition also included selected gifts to the Museum of photographs by Alen MacWeeney. Born in Dublin in 1939, the photographer established a worldwide reputation when he chronicled the native itinerants of Ireland known as the Travellers. The artist’s genre studies in the chapels and pubs of Dublin, and his country landscapes, possess a mood of poetic evocation. Also included in the exhibition were MacWeeney’s photographs of O’Neill House in Southwestern County Kerry. Approximately fifty-five photographs, ranging in date from 1965 to 2015, were shown.