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Remembering the Famine is tough because words can fail us. In the Netherlands, the potato blight of themid-1840s was devastating: an estimated 60,000 people died. In Ireland, the death toll was 1.1 million. 

If the Dutch tragedy is horrific, appalling and terrible, what words are adequate for the second? The insufficiency of verbal language means that we need a visual one and, until recently, there was a place where such a visual language was most fully explored.

The Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac, halfway between those two great magnets for Irish refugees, 

New York and Boston, was a highly intelligent answer to the problem of representing such a trauma. 

Over a period of 20 years before its opening, it assembled a unique collection of visual records and artistic responses to the Famine, from the 19th through to the 21st centuries, latterly curated by the art historian Niamh O’Sullivan. The museum was connected to the scholarship of the university’s Great Hunger Institute, run by the distinguished famine historian Christine Kenneally.

Alongside its archival collections of contemporary manuscripts, prints, letters and news reports, it 

brought together important paintings and installations by, among others, Jack B Yeats, Rowan Gillespie, 

Margaret Allen, Erskine Nicol, Alanna O’Kelly, William Crozier, Brian Maguire, John Behan, Hughie O’Donoghue, Michael Farrell, Geraldine O’Reilly, Dorothy Cross, Robert Ballagh, Grace Henry, 

Pádraic Reaney, Meg Chamberlain and James Arthur O’Connor.

All of this cost somewhere between $5 million and $6 million. It was worth it: visiting the museum was a profound experience. The space was designed to be sombre without being oppressive. The vividness of the displays, paintings and sculptures was in poignant tension with a mourning of the dead.

In 2018, Lahey retired as president of Quinnipiac. In 2020, the museum closed because of the Covid pandemic. In August 2021, the new president of the university, Judy Olian, announced that it would not reopen. Quinnipiac claimed that “efforts to boost fundraising for the museum had fallen short” and that it had become unviable. An offer by a group of Irish-American scholars and activists, Bord an Gorta Mór, to work with Quinnipiac to raise the necessary funds and develop a five-year strategic plan was rejected.

Subsequently, the university claimed that it was transferring the collection to the Gaelic American Club(GAC) in Fairfield, Connecticut – a social and sporting organisation that is a hive of Irish-related activities but that does not and never has run a museum or art collection of any kind. In September 2022, GAC announced that while it endorsed the idea of moving the collection to Fairfield, “we cannot be a party to the transaction”.

What’s actually happening is that a well-meaning group of people informally associated with the GAC is trying to raise $5 million (€4.6 million) to create a museum in a building that is currently occupied by a food bank and will not be available for several years. It does not have this money. Its

website pleads with visitors

to “donate the price of a pint”. It also claims that it intends “to serve as the new caretakers and curators of the Irish Great Hunger Museum collection”. This task should not be left to a group of well-meaning amateurs who have neither the expertise nor the funds.

In reality, the “world’s largest collection of visual art, artefacts and printed materials relating to the Great Famine” is currently in storage without professional curation or preservation. It has effectively disappeared into a limbo of oblivion from which it is to be rescued at some unknown point in the future only if enough well wishers donate the price of a pint.

Again, the word that comes to mind is exceptional. Would any other country allow this to happen to suchan important repository of the collective memory of its most formative trauma? Indeed, would this happento an equivalent collection that dealt with the parts of modern Irish history we do like to talk about suchas, say, the 1916 Rising? Perhaps, even if the Famine no longer generates a great silence, it remains incapable 

of generating a coherent sense of collective ownership.

Sir, – As the oldest Irish society in the Americas (founded in colonial Boston in 1737), the Charitable Irish Society of Boston welcomes Fintan O’Toole’s article relating to the abrupt closure in 2021 of Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum by Quinnipiac University (“One of the two main museums dedicated to memory of Great Famine has disappeared. That’s astonishing”, Opinion & Analysis, May 14th). 

Our society’s historic mission of assisting newly arrived immigrants, initially from Ireland, and now from all over the globe, resonates directly with the world-class collection of paintings, sculpture and artefacts contained within the Quinnipiac collection. The value of the collection in illustrating the lessons and legacy of Ireland as they relate to contemporary global challenges of famine, poverty, forced migration, poor governance and religious discrimination is immense.

Shortly after the museum’s opening, our Society and the Eire Society of Boston made a special trip to the museum, and our members were awed by the experience. The art works viewed enabled us to move beyond the oft-quoted statistic of a 25 per cent decline in Ireland’s population by 1852 to having a greater appreciation of the deep human trauma that An Gorta Mór and its aftermath had for our ancestors. Moreover, the collection serves as a catalyst for its viewers to convert their empathy into action that will help their fellow human beings today. The Irish Famine is a central marker of our identity and an experience that shaped our individual and communal commitments to work for social and economic justice for all in our own times. Our society was shocked and dismayed by the closure and immediately offered help to facilitate the museum’s reopening.

We fully support the goal of Ireland’s Great Hunger Bord to preserve the entire collection and display it in its beautifully designed museum in Hamden. We strongly urge the Quinnipiac administration to reopen the museum within a reasonable time frame, as opposed to their present plans. 

By doing so, Quinnipiac University will live up to its published commitment to educate its students and the public about global issues of economic and social justice. We are confident that such a decision would energise the Irish-American diaspora to offer assistance in reopening this collection and developing Quinnipiac’s potential to become a global centre for famine studies.

We urge concerned Irish citizens to contact the Quinnipiac University administration to convey their support for the reopening of this unique treasure of Ireland’s cultural heritage in its initial home in Hamden, Connecticut. – Yours, etc,

KATHLEEN WILLIAMS, 

President,

Charitable Irish Society of Boston,

West Roxbury, 

Massachusetts, US.

Publication 12.07.22

Bullseye! Courageous editors.

Publication 11.01.22

Ten years ago on October 11, 2012, Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum opened its doors to the public at Quinnipiac University, Hamden CT. It is the only museum in North America dedicated to commemorating the greatest humanitarian disaster of the 19th century. The museum was the culmination of years of curating and culling art, artifacts and texts that bore witness to An Gorta Mór, Ireland’s Great Hunger, which decimated the population of Ireland.  

The unjustified--and well-documented—permanent closure of the museum in 2021 by Quinnipiac has been a violation of the public trust and an act of historical erasure. Since then, Quinnipiac has refused to provide evidence justifying the closure and to answer questions about the condition of the Collection.

Over the last year a small group of volunteers has come together to form Ireland’s Great Hunger Bord (IGHB), which is dedicated to helping institutions tell the story of this great famine. IGHB has developed a campaign to protect Ireland’s Great Hunger Collection shuttered at Quinnipiac. The collection commemorates the history of the Famine and the wide-ranging effect it has had on the United States. Over the year we have spent over $15,000 in our efforts to bring our campaign to the attention of the general public through our website, social media, media advertising, marketing promotions and special events. Now we need your help to continue this work.

To mark the 10th anniversary we encourage all well-meaning folks to help us urge Quinnipiac to reopen the museum in Hamden until the Connecticut Attorney General finishes his inquiry and approves a transfer to a qualified entity.  By reopening the museum, the relevant humanitarian lessons and legacy represented by this unique collection will be broadcast to the general public at a time when issues of hunger, migration and poor and inefficient governance persist throughout the globe.

IGHB is your voice for the future of Ireland’s Great Hunger Collection—your support at whatever level will

strengthen our ability to protect the collection, encourage thoughtful planning for the future, and foster inclusive scholarship on this important topic across the globe. 

Help us continue our work to protect the Ireland’s Great Hunger Collection

Publication 10.14.22 

We are heartened by the continued public interest in exhibiting
the art collection that was on display at Ireland’s Great Hunger
Museum of Quinnipiac University. That acknowledgment
comes at a singular moment in time.

Ten years ago on October 11, 2012, the museum opened its
doors to the public. The IGHM was the world's only museum
dedicated to commemorating the greatest humanitarian disaster
of the 19th century.

The museum was the culmination of years of curating and
culling art, artifacts and texts that bore witness to An Gorta
Mór, Ireland’s Great Hunger, which decimated the population
of Ireland; one million people died and two million fled the country.

The unjustified--and well-documented—permanent closure of
the museum in 2021 by Quinnipiac has been a violation of the
public trust and an act of historical erasure. Since then,
Quinnipiac has refused to provide evidence justifying the
closure and to answer questions about the condition of the Collection.

To read more click here. 

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University should be celebrating

its tenth anniversary this month. The Museum that proudly opened its doors on

September 28, 2012, was the culmination of years of curating and culling art,

artifacts and texts that bore witness to An Gorta Mór, Ireland’s Great Hunger.

Instead, Quinnipiac has decided to play a dangerous game. The public outcry

surrounding the unjustified closure of the Museum has fallen on deaf ears,

and QU has, in an act of flagrant disrespect for their public trust, loaned a

portion of the Collection to Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum of Fairfield, a

hastily formed entity with no building, staff, membership or financial capacity.

Selected artworks will be on display in a hallway at the Fairfield Museum and

History Center for a few weeks before being hustled back into storage with the

remaining collection indefinitely. That Quinnipiac has approved of the loan of 30

pieces–of which only 24 appear to be on view–is an outrage and a violation,

given that Quinnipiac is still the guardian of the artworks.

Moreover, the loan was made on false pretenses: last March, in response to the

furor over the museum’s shuttering, Quinnipiac issued a public statement falsely

asserting the Collection was to be entrusted to the care of the Gaelic American

Club in Fairfield, Connecticut. That statement indicated that Quinnipiac’s Board

of Trustees had approved the transfer to the Gaelic American Club. However,

the Gaelic American Club had never voted among its members to ratify that

decision. The falsehood that GAC was the official steward was repeated publicly

by Quinnipiac Provost Debra Liebowitz at a gathering in Fairfield two weeks ago.

Then, last week (09.21.22), in a written memo to its members, Gerry Forde, the

Executive Committee-President of the Gaelic American Club disclaimed any

responsibility for the collection or for establishing a new Famine museum.

Read more...