Next Event: Pearse Museum, Dublin

The Pearse Museum would like to invite IMA members and Guests to a museum visit, focusing on the recent redevelopment of the permanent collection at the Pearse Museum, on Saturday 28 May 2016 at 11am.

Surrounded by fifty acres of landscaped parkland, the Pearse Museum is located in the former home and school of Patrick Pearse, the leader of the 1916 Rising. Following the death of Pearse's last surviving sister in 1968, the house and grounds were handed over to the state with the provision that they be used as a memorial to the lives of Patrick and William Pearse. The Pearse Museum was then opened to the public in 1979.

The current museum exhibition seeks to recapture a sense of the spirit of the house during Pearse's time. His study and the family sitting room allow very personal glimpses of the lives of the former occupants. Side by side with these rooms are the more public spaces in which Pearse's pupils lived and worked. Visitors can now see the school dormitory, study hall and chapel. The school art gallery has been recreated in its original location and features pieces by Beatrice Elvery, Patrick Tuohy, W.B. Yeats and Count Casimir Markievicz.

There is also a "museum-within-a-museum" as the original school museum has also been reconstructed. The pupils themselves ran the museum and elected a curator every year from among the student body. One of the original museum cases has survived and it now contains many of the original displays. In addition, using contemporary accounts of what the museum once held it was possible to commission reproductions of objects which would have been there in Pearse's time.

For the first time a gallery in the museum has been exclusively devoted to works by William Pearse from the Pearse Museum collection, as well as from the collections of Kilmainham Gaol Museum, the National Museum and private individuals.

This is a free event but booking is essential for all IMA events. Guests are welcome.

Click here to email the IMA office and reserve a place.