By
Deirdre Kelly
In the 19th and 20th Centuries debate ensued about what sort of place public art galleries and museums should be - reverential temples of culture, or interactive places of learning. In this new generation, the abiding question remains, why is it necessary to go to a museum to see a dead stuffed animal or original painting that can be reproduced to a high quality on the computer screen?
‘The goal of museum education, is pleasure through enlightenment…’ [1]
The questioning of the role of the public gallery is not a new phenomenon. It is something that has been argued over since its very conception, and the debate is ongoing. Indeed this was the very theme of The Irish Museum of Modern Art’s Biannual International Symposium which took place on the twelfth and thirteenth of November two thousand and eight. Museum 21: Institution Practice Idea, investigated ne...
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World Leaders including Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy, Lula de Silva, and Jose Manuel Barrosa appear on the front page of newspaper to announce a historic climate change deal, achieved thanks to a massive global disobedience campaign.
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Brad Mehldau's recent brief Irish tour was the subject of feverish anticipation, but would the American pianist's performance live up to expectations? John Doyle went along to see this powerhouse of modern jazz.
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The Ryan Report into clerical child abuse in Ireland is a shocking and sobering document that, argues William Wall, leaves the good and honest in the Catholic Church little choice. The only moral response is to reject the system
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In that late '70s moment between punk and Reagonomics, Bob Dylan chronicled his own Saul of Tarsus moment, with a trio of Christian albums. John Doyle dares to look back, and finds Mr Zimmerman cruising with Shelley.
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While political leaders call for a unified response to the global economic crisis, the reality of much political action has been to look after national interests. What effect, then, will the economic crisis have on the enlarged European Union?
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We're living in a period when, according to Paul Wilson - translator of amongst others Vaclav Havel -George Orwell's newspeak is being replaced by pr speak. He speaks to Horatio Morpurgo about censorship, the cold war, and the language of democracy.
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Already tipped by many to be the novel of 2009, Lowboy by American author John Wray tells the story of a young schizophrenic fugitive. Wray, singled out by Granta as one of the most promising young American novelists talks to TMO about the novel, and the challenges of writing about mental illness.
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Viewing Ireland, the world's second wealthiest nation in 2007, through the prism of Charles Dickens' Hard Times, novelist William Wall - in an article based on his recent speech at the Kate O'Brien Weekend - asks his fellow writers to leave their ivory towers.
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Paolo Giordano, the youngest novelist to win the prestigious Italian literary prize the Premio Strega. Giordano talks to TMO about his debut novel (now available in English) The Solitude of Prime Numbers
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In February 2008 Australia's Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a historic apology to the Stolen Generation of Aboriginal people. James Patterson was in Sydney at the time, and conducted a series of interviews which place the apology in a wider context of the continuing search, by Australia's indigenous people, for social justice.
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Steven Galloway stridently defends his right, as a Canadian novelist, to write about the bloodiest chapter in recent European history. He discusses his best-selling novel, The Cellist of Sarajevo with TMO.
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The massacre of 335 civilians in Rome's Fosse Ardeatine caves was one of the most brutal acts during the German occupation of Ital...
Equally at home in an orchestra or solo onstage with just a guitar and his songs, Simon Fagan is one of Ireland's most promising n...
The Irish are the only nation that will get a chance to vote directly to ratify or reject the Lisbon Treaty. In 2005, in the after...
Death as a fictionalised experience allies itself harmoniously with literary fiction. Both are spaces of invention and both seek t...
Dr. Catherine Lawless explores the position of a particular category of women who did not fit at all easily into either religious ...
Dublin band the Delorentos are riding high in the limelight, with a nomination for both best Irish band of 2008, and best Irish al...
Pedro Almodóvar’s name is mentioned in intelectual circles among those who love Spanish cinematographic history beside...
A campaign by Ireland's leading sports personalities, Show Racism the Red Card, highlights the role sport can have in integ...
One of the most mysterious murders of Italy's murky Cold War history was that of Roberto Calvi, the head of the Banco Ambrosiano, ...
The very essence of the cold war was dividing the world into blocs, of 'us' and 'them'. Strung between Stalin and Gorbachev, thin...
"we recognise something political in you. We suspect that you analyse problems from a political rather than a pragmatic perspectiv...
They are one of Britain's best loved and least well-known new bands. Their debut album, Not Accepted Anywhere spawned hit s...
One of the most exciting and popular European authors to achieve wide success in translation is Spain's Carlos Ruiz Zafon, whose '...
A novelist whose work is insistently political, Ronan Bennett is the author of The Catastrophist, Havoc in its Third Year, and mos...
Barcelona in Carlos Ruiz Zafon's best-selling novel The Shadow of the Wind is a cold, mist-shrouded place filled with myste...
Laila Lalami's debut novel Hope and other dangerous pursuits puts a human face on the issue of illegal immigration from Nor...
The publication of Lady Chatterley's Lover in 1960 by Penguin founder Allen Lane, in the face of prosecution for obscenity, was wi...
Carl Newman, of Canadian band The New Pornographers, talks to TMO about pop music, songs, and why it takes more guts to write a ha...
Luka Bloom is, in a sense, an elder statesman of the Irish music scene. His career has spanned over twenty years, and reflected ch...
Europe faces the challenge of a serious labour shortage in coming years due to declining populations, but its ability to attract h...
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Bologna, home to the world's oldest University (founded in 1088), has a rich and varied history - founded by the Etruscans, developed by the Celtic tribe the Boii (from whom it gets its name), and conquered by both the Romans and later the Vatican
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