Eire/Land

Kreilkamp Vera

From its earliest history, Ireland has been contested land, claimed by waves of invaders, each attempting to inscribe and possess the island territory. The eire/Land exhibition, to be held at the McMullen Museum from February to May 2003, is the first major art exhibition to examine this theme. From medieval topographical surveys and Celtic artifacts to nineteenth-century landscapes and the expressionist art of the present day, eire/Land collects pieces that collectively reveal Ireland's contested past – including works by Dierdre O'Mahony, Jack Butler Yeats, Sean Keating, and architect Brian Tolle. Drawing on original research by prominent international scholars and by the largest and most distinguished Irish studies faculty in North America, this catalog relates those works and artifacts to new scholarship in a variety of disciplines, lending Ireland's visual history the cultural, historical, and political context it deserves.

Contents:

Editor's Dedication – Vera Kreilkamp
Director's Preface – Nancy Netzer
"Bogland" – Seamus Heaney
Introduction – Marjorie Howes and Kevin O'Neill

Mapping
The Turn to the Map: Cartographic Fictions in Irish Culture
Claire Connolly

Making and Remaking the Irish Landscape in the Early Middle Ages
Robin Fleming

Shaping and Mis-shaping: Visual Impressions of Ireland in Illuminated Manuscripts
Michelle P. Brown

Digging
Art/Full Ground: Unearthing an Early Medieval Golden Age for Ireland
Nancy Netzer

Sacred Landscapes and Ancient Rituals: Two Watercolors by George Petrie
Pamela Berger

Possessing
Observing Irish Romantic Landscape Painting
Katherine Nahum

Painting Mayo's Landscape: The Big House, the Pleasure Grounds, and the Mills
Vera Kreilkamp

Visualizing the Famine in County Mayo
Margaret Preston

"The Land for the People": Post-Famine Images of Eviction
L. Perry Curtis

"The soil of Ireland for the people of Ireland": The Politics of Land in Irish Visual Imagery 1850-1936
Robert Savage

Painting the West: The Role of Landscape in Irish Identity
Sighle Bhreathnach-Lynch

Responding Today
Exploring Place and Artistic Practice in Northern Mayo
Alston Conley

The Art of Dinnseanchas. Excavating the Storied Past of Place
Lisabeth Buchelt

Responding Today: Dis/Location and the Land
Kate Costello-Sullivan

Contemporary Encounters with Irish Landscape
Robin Lydenberg

Works in the Exhibition
Mapping
Digging
Possessing
Responding Today
Contributors to the Catalogue

About the Author

Vera Kreilkamp is professor of Irish studies at Boston College, co-editor of "Eire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies", and the author of "The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House". She has edited two previous McMullen Museum exhibition catalogs of "Irish art: Eire/Land", and "America's Eye: Irish Painting from the Collection of Brian P. Burns", with Adele Dalsimer.

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