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.

Our art teacher, Judy O’Connell, came with us. I sat with my friend, Julie McCarthy — the only ones in our friend group who did art and we loved it. I liked school. Even subjects I found hard, I gave my best shot, but art was like nectar for me.

Our teacher was so dedicated and motivated, always reflecting on how to teach things the best way.

I remember her teaching us lino-cutting and saying ‘oh God, I taught this better to the other class’. I had coffee with her recently — she laughed when I showed her the scar on my finger, still there from the lino-cutting.

She thought it very important that we learned the history of art — other teachers saw that as an extra. We had a slide projector and she’d show us early Irish art, high crosses, all the gold work. She taught us so carefully. I couldn’t get enough.

Setting out on that school trip, for me it wasn’t a doss. It was an adventure — ‘today we’re going to see all these beautiful things’. That’s why I was so excited, not because we were going to stop at McDonald’s.

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

I was quite young for my years, very happy to be enthusiastic about things. I wasn’t cool. Some teens go into themselves, think ‘I don’t want people thinking I’m a nerd’, I never had that. I was so excited about learning and art didn’t stop at school. I was always up in my room making things, old-fashioned things, I loved embroidery and paper quilling.

I’m a better crafter than an artist. But those slides in art class took me to something else — in the guidance counselling room I found a Trinity College prospectus and noticed history of art and architecture.

We stepped off the bus in Kildare Street, right outside the museum, the archaeology one. The first room, the rotunda with the beautiful mosaics on the floor. As you come through, the exhibition is a few steps down in a lower section and it’s all the beautiful gold from pre-history. It took my breath away, like the room turned gold for a moment. I was just overwhelmed, couldn’t believe how beautiful, like a sea of gold, these huge golden beads in cases in front of me.

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

Our art history book had images of all these pieces. We’d done it in class and now — ‘oh my goodness, there are the gold discs from Tydavnet, Co Monaghan, there’s the Glenisheen Gorget, there’s the Broighter Hoard’. They were all in my mind from sitting on a stool in class in Clonakilty, looking at slides. Suddenly, that learning was made really important — I realised I knew what they were, and it was a magical moment of recognition.

Really significant moments in your life are crystal clear in memory. That moment of seeing all the gold, that golden feeling — I fell in love: with the idea that there are places you can be amazed — and they are open, you can just walk through the door.

It was a defining moment, cementing that things from the past would be part of my life. I went to Trinity and studied the history of art and architecture. Sometimes I wonder: do you find these things or do they find you? I’ve tried other jobs, but I keep looping back. I crave to be in a museum, in a heritage place, where I get to be with objects from the past, and talk to people about them. It’s what makes me happy.

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

Someone said paintings are like time batteries, they hold a charge, and the charge is the energy of the past. They can speak to us, help us connect with the past in this real way — they’re not just passive things on a wall. That day in the National Museum, I really got that bits of gold, made by people’s hands 3,000 to 5,000 years ago, are still got by people today. The age of them — and I thought they were as beautiful as the person who made them thought.

I’m curator of the Butter Museum, and we have 1,000-year-old bog butter, something so concrete, here — we can see and connect with it, something so familiar: butter. There’s magic in that.

At 17, I found a compass in my life, something that had real meaning for me. Some people cast around all their life, looking for their thing, their niche, what makes them happy. I was so lucky to connect so young with something that gave my life meaning.

Shandon’s Butter Museum stays open late tonight with free admission until 9pm – there’s a special activity corner where children can design their own butter wrappers. Marking Culture Night 2025, doors across Cork City open late, offering a vibrant programme of special events and one-of-a-kind experiences – all free. Full programme details: www.corkcity.ie/en/culture-night/