The National Gallery of Ireland is currently celebrating 150 years of existence. An impressive feat, I’m sure you’ll agree. So too is the manner in which they are celebrating this milestone.
The Gallery asked 56 of Ireland’s most celebrated writers to contribute a piece of work to a collection of theirs. This new collection is called Lines of Vision: Irish Writers on Art and contains stories, poems and essays. Each writer who contributed was asked to choose a painting from the Gallery’s collection to use as the source of inspiration for their piece.
The works chosen hang together in a beautiful exhibition which reinvigorates works of art which may have become either over-familiar or forgotten to visitors of the gallery. Not that we’re exactly spoiled for choice in comparison to some of our other European counterparts, but there is real beauty to be found here, or the representation at least.
Each painting is accompanied by a short bio of the writer who chose it. There is a 15 minute film at the end of the exhibition which compliments it nicely.
Also in conjunction with the exhibition, there are numerous talks and workshops happening in the gallery, most of which are free.