The Ulster Museum in Belfast reopened its spruced-up suite of 10 art galleries last week with displays of modern and contemporary work under the general title Countdown, writes Aidan Dunne. You start with gallery 10, then 9, 8, 7 ... The countdown is notionally to 2008, when Belfast is one of the cities bidding to be European City of Culture. By that time the museum aims, ambitiously, to have built a stand-alone art museum in the city. There have been grumbles at the removal of some of the collection's historical works in favour of a concentration on the modern, but the galleries look better than they have done for some time: spacious, airy and bright.
The centrepiece is drawn not from in-house collections but from AIB's formidable range of Irish art. The work here concentrates on the past 20 years or so. It is an interesting choice given that, during that time, Irish arts institutions were for various reasons slow to acquire representative samples of the Irish art being produced. So the AIB work directly augments the museum's holdings and looks convincing in the capacious temporary exhibition space.
That's more than can be said for a room housing work from the Saatchi Gift of works donated to UK galleries through the National Art Collections Fund. For the most part they already look a range of couture garments in the Fashion Now section and strong displays of contemporary ceramics and glass works.
The Ulster Orchestra has introduced its new principal conductor at the unveiling of the programme for its 35th-anniversary season, writes Jane Coyle. He is Thierry Fischer, a Swiss flautist who moved into full-time conducting in 1992. Since 1997, he has been chief conductor of the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra; he succeeds Dmitry Sitkovetsky, who has taken up a new role as the Ulster Orchestra's first conductor laureate.
Fischer's enthusiasm for both the job and the forthcoming season were palpable when he met a gathering of press, sponsors and subscribers at the Waterfront Hall in Belfast. He spoke with passion about his belief in the orchestra's ability to rise to the challenging programme, whose dominant theme is "visions of Utopia". "I use the word 'utopia' to mean an imaginary state of perfection.
In addition to the main themed concerts, the orchestra will, between September and mid-May 2002, perform Mendelssohn's five symphonies and Walton's three concertos. The popular Living Composers series continues, with works by, among others, George Benjamin - who will conduct his own Ringed By The Flat Horizon- - and the Belfast composer Deirdre Gribbin, whose new commission, Unity Of Being, opens the season on September 28th.
Fischer's appointment comes in the wake of a £48,000 sterling cut in the orchestra's annual revenue funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland. While David Fisk, its chief executive, made no reference at the launch to the reduction, the orchestra has registered it's disappointment, given the scope of it's award-winning education and community outreach programme and it's prestigious work in the international arena.
frontrow@irish-times.ie
