Collaborating in Conflict: The Yeats Family and the Public Arts

Friday, Feb 20, 2026 - Saturday Feb, 21 | Connolly House & McMullen Museum | Register to Attend

© Estate of Jack B. Yeats. All rights reserved, DACS/ARS 2026

Event Overview

The exhibition Collaborating in Conflict: The Yeats Family and the Public Arts explores how three generations of a talented, complicated family shaped each other, the arts, and public life in Ireland and beyond.  This unprecedented McMullen Museum exhibition brings together over 200 objects and a wide range of media: drawing, painting, literature, theater, embroidery, and printing and publishing.  An accompanying catalogue collects essays from scholars working in a diverse array of disciplines.  This two-day symposium brings a group of these scholars to Boston College.

Co-sponsored by the Irish Studies.

  

 

Friday, February 20, 2026 - Connolly House

9 - 9:30 AMCoffee
9:30 - 11 AM

Panel 1

Marjorie Howes, Boston College, “An Overview of the Exhibition”

Hannah Baker, Trinity College Dublin, “The Artistic Methodologies of John Butler Yeats”

Sarah McAuliffe, National Gallery of Ireland, “My Own Small Shadow: Anne Yeats’s LastingImpact on the Visual Arts in Ireland”

 

11 - 11:30 AMCoffee
11:30 - 1 PM

Panel 2

Christy Pottroff, Boston College, “What Molllie Gill Gathered: Collectivity & Creativity in theArchive of a ‘Cuala Girl’”

Marie Lynch, National Gallery of Ireland, “A Pixie in Irish Art: Pamela Colman Smith and theYeats Family”

Christian Dupont and Diana Larsen, Boston College, “The Stations of the Cross”

1 - 2 PMLunch
2 - 2:30 PM

Andrew Kuhn, Rare Book School, the University of Virginia, “Affairs never really ran smoothly”:Elizabeth Corbet Yeats and the Failures of Handicraft”

Angela Griffith, Trinity College Dublin, “Reading Cuala Prints; Visual Analysis andContexts”

Billy Shortall, Trinity College Dublin, “Cuala Press: Art, Text, and Politics”

3 - 4 PMCoffee
4 - 5:30 PM

Panel 4

Roisin Kennedy, University College Dublin, “Statecraft and Theater in the Visual Art of Jack B.Yeats”

Adrian Paterson, University of Galway, “Spaces for Song: Music Performed through the Arts”

Tom Walker, Trinity College Dublin, “Making the Right Lines: From Venice to Dundrum”

5:30 - 7 PMReception

Saturday, February 21, 2026 - McMullen  Museum

12 - 1 PMLunch
1 - 2 PMTour of the Exhibition
2:30 - 3 PMCoffee
3 - 5 PM

Student performances and presentations

Campus Map and Parking:

Parking is available at the nearby Beacon Street and Commonwealth Avenue Garages.

Boston College is also accessible via public transportation (MBTA B Line - Boston College).

Directions, Maps, and Parking

Visitor Parking Information

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