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A special art exhibition featuring works by both contemporary and traditional artists from Ireland made its North American debut earlier this week at Boston College.
“Burst the Heart Open,” sponsored by the Center for Irish Programs and the Office of the University Librarian, opened Monday and is on display in the Burns Library Fine Print and Irish rooms through Jan. 14. Click here for hours.
The exhibition showcases 34 paintings from the collection administered by Ireland’s Office of Public Works (OPW) in Dublin — which comprises several thousand Irish artworks and historical artifacts — and provides a contrast between some of the Irish art classics and the more recent genre of modern Irish art, with which many people are not familiar.
Among the paintings on display from Ireland are Brian Bourke’s “James Joyce,” Patrick Collins’s “Virgin River,” Grace Henry’s “Study,” Paul Henry’s “The Purple Sea,” Sean MacSweeney’s “Bog Pool” and Jack Butler Yeats’ “The Ferry, Early Morning.”
The exhibition title was inspired by the Seamus Heaney poem “Postscript” and the lines:
As big soft buffetings come at the car sideways
and catch the heart off guard and blow it open
“I think it is rewarding and highly appropriate for Boston College to be the venue for the debut of this important exhibition given that Boston College indisputably has the preeminent Irish studies program in North America,” says Center for Irish Programs Executive Director and University Professor of History Thomas Hachey.
The University is the exclusive Boston-area venue for the exhibition, which will tour cities across the country as well as in Ireland as part of the initiative “Imagine Ireland: A Year of Irish Arts in America,” supported by Culture Ireland, the Dublin-based state agency for the promotion of Irish arts worldwide.
Curator Adrian Kelly’s intention, according to organizers, is “that the paintings might catch the viewer off guard and cause them to pause for a moment to consider the painting they stand before and that their hearts would be engaged by the artist's vision.”
To complement the exhibition, holdings from Burns Library, selected by an exhibition committee led by Burns Conservator Barbara Hebard, also are featured.
These include paintings housed in the Irish Room by Robert George Kelly, Michael Augustin Power O’Malley, Frank McKelvey, Miceál Ó Nualláin, Margaret Clarke, Paul Henry, Seán Keating and Jack Butler Yeats.
In addition, synopses in display cases on selected pieces contextualize the exhibit with information about the artists, and other holdings on display also will be seen by visitors, including books, harps and sculpture. A complementary exhibit of research materials relating to Irish painters, titled “Painter, Illustrator, Author: Irish Art in the Twentieth Century,” comprises volumes illustrated by artists whose paintings are on display.
The BC team’s charge, according to Hebard, was “to complement the exhibit with materials which will educate Boston College students and interested scholars in the process of conducting art research.” They selected materials to connect the OPW paintings, Burns Library paintings, and resources available at the Burns and Bapst libraries.
OPW Senior Art Exhibitor Jacquie Moore, who was at Monday’s opening of the exhibition, says “Burst the Heart Open” demonstrates the continued passion for painting among the younger generation of Irish artists. “We are delighted that the Burns Library has engaged so energetically with us in this exhibition and taken the initiative to explore works from its own collection, that resonate with the works that have travelled from Ireland,” she added.
Organized by Culture Ireland and the OPW, the BC exhibition is supported by the President’s Office, the Center for Irish Programs and the Office of the University Librarian.
BC exhibition team members include: Bapst Art Librarian Adeane Bregman, Reference Librarian/Bibliographer Justine Sundaram, Irish Studies Librarian Kathy Williams, graduate student Andrew Kuhn, Book Builders of Boston intern Catherine Macek and Robert Williams ’14. Meaghan Madden, senior special collections cataloging assistant, selected books which are on display in the Fine Print Room.