Cork's Butter Museum curator Dr Danielle O’Donovan: ‘I found meaning in my life through art’

Marking Culture Night, Butter Museum curator Dr Danielle O’Donovan talks to Helen O’Callaghan about finding her life’s purpose as a teenager on a school art trip – and how she sees museums and what they contain as a very potent bridge between past and present

Danielle O'Donovan, curator of Cork's Butter Museum. Picture Dan Linehan.

I was 17, in fifth year at Sacred Heart Secondary School, Clonakilty. It was 1995. Our art class was going on a trip to Dublin to see the Texaco art prize — some of us had art on display. We were also going to the National Museum.

We left school when it was still dark. My mother dropped me down — it felt extraordinary, being dropped so early. Back then there was no motorway — driving from Clon to Dublin City Centre took six hours. I look back now — even the ambition of bringing us so far. I remember stopping in Urlingford on the way home and it being dark again.