Art gallery plans to build on 2005 success
Having staged a series of enormously successful exhibitions as part of the CoC programme throughout 2005 - with the last of those, the James Barry exhibition, continuing until March - the gallery recorded a 40% increase in visitor numbers with a total of 250,000 passing through its doors last year.
Curator Peter Murray yesterday said, "we are delighted with the increase and unlike some other venues, visitor figures are not massaged or manipulated: there is a clock which counts every person who enters but we discard those coming in to use the restaurant or anyone coming in after 5pm to lectures or other evening events."
And this year the gallery should figure prominently as it switches from being a municipal gallery to come under the wing of the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism. A formal ceremony to mark the transition is likely to occur sometime in May to coincide with the election of a new board and the opening of yet another major exhibition.
Mr Murray said, "We have been steadily moving towards the new arrangement with legal niceties being completed on a weekly basis and all should be in place by the time the new board is announced."
Last year's visitor figures, which included a substantial number of tourists, were boosted by exhibitions of the calibre of C2 (an overview of artists working in Cork over the last 20 years); Figure and Ground (an exhibition of drawings by the artists, Rembrandt and Mondrian); Airgeadóir: Cork Silver and Gold; both the Allied Irish Bank collection and the Bank of Ireland collection; and the James Barry exhibition.
Planned for May is an exhibition called Whipping the Herring after a Nathaniel Grogan painting of the same name which alludes to an old festival from the 18th century when locals would gather at the city's North Gate Bridge to literally whip a herring.
Mr Murray said, "during a time when famine and hunger were constant companions of the poorer classes the herring was the food which the poorest of the poor subsisted on and this festival was designed to drive out famine and hunger - and after months of eating smoked or salted herrings from the Netherlands the people were heartily sick of them."
The exhibition, drawn mostly from the work of artists in the 19th century, will feature scenes of ordinary people at festivals and fairs, in pubs and shops and carrying out everyday jobs like weaving and spinning.
It is hoped that Arts Minister John O'Donoghue will be able to open the exhibition and formalise the gallery's new status under the Department.
Speaking about the premises on Emmet Place, Mr Murray said, "the building is not too bad - we were anxious to allay any fears that the Department might be inheriting a ramshackle building. Any visitor can see that there is no shortage of room for improvement but this is a working gallery in pretty good shape. We have done a lot in recent years but we certainly hope to make further improvements in the years to come."
