New Director of Collections & Access at NMI

Dr Éimear O'Connor has been appointed as Director of Collections and Access at the National Museum of Ireland, providing leadership, innovation and direction on all collections, collections access and research matters across the museum.

In her new role, Dr O'Connor will have responsibility for line managing the collections and research team including four curatorial departments (Art & Industry, Irish Antiquities, Irish Folk life and Natural History), the Conservation, and Registration Departments as well as Graphic Design and Photography and Online Collections.

O'Connor has been resident director of The Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig since mid-January 2021. A noted art historian, visual arts curator, and author, with thirty-five years’ experience in the cultural sector, she is formerly a member of the Board of Directors of The Arts Council/An Chomhairle Ealaíon and the Irish Museum of Modern Art. O'Connor holds a BA and PhD from UCD, and an MBA first class from DIT.

She is the author of Seán Keating: Art, Politics and Building the Irish Nation (Irish Academic Press, 2013) and Art, Ireland, and the Irish Diaspora. Dublin to New York: Culture, Connections, and Controversies (Irish Academic Press, 2020), which was awarded the inaugural Lawrence J. McCaffrey Award for a book on Irish America by the American Conference of Irish Studies (2021). She is editor of Irish Women Artists: Familiar but Unknown (Four Courts Press, 2010), author of several chapters, articles, and catalogue essays on Irish art and artists in Ireland and further afield, and curator of major exhibitions in cultural institutions in Ireland.

O'Connor has lectured on Irish art and its complex contexts in cultural institutions in Ireland and America and is an honorary member of the RHA and the RUA. In 2022, she was appointed, as Uachtarain na hÉireann/President of Ireland's nominee, to the Board of Directors of the Chester Beatty Library.

It is anticipated Dr O'Connor will take up her new role in the coming weeks.