Time travel: Forget romantic images of rural Ireland in the past: the Museum of Country Life in Co Mayo shows how it was - a struggle, writes Lorna Siggins.
My museum is about the ephemeral and the nearly invisible . . . it is as much about states of mind, memories and feelings as it is about the objects in the world around us. My passion is to deny boundaries rather than create them." This was the wish of Constantin Fripp, said to be an Austro-Hungarian former primary school teacher whose life was changed by the second World War. In 1953, he founded the Museum of Modern Oddities (MoMO) as an alternative to the conventional institution.
Now in Melbourne, Australia, the MoMO looks like a run-down old hardware shop, but is filled with old marbles, dead cats, manual typewriters, ancient boxes and small offerings left by passers-by; poems, banknotes and lollipop wrappers.
The MoMO has several affiliates across the world, including the Museum of Collected Longing, run by a Bulgarian in a cramped apartment in Brazil, and the Jacques l'Oranges "Gallerie de Muse de Dump" in Montreal, Canada. Taking the theme "we are what we dump", it runs a community art project known as "de dump de dump" which displays all our familiar rubbish in prominent downtown department store windows.
And why not? What is the past only one's interpretation of it, written and rewritten by life's experiences? But if you were to learn that one Neil Thomas, Australian actor, writer and comedian, is linked to that particular initiative, you would know how seriously to treat it. Thomas has a penchant for making an exhibition of himself in shop windows, having spent several Galway Arts Festivals in same - most recently his two-week stint with his group, the Urban Dream Capsule, in Galway City Library last year. He is listed as joint curator of the Museum of Modern Oddities, which has its own website, www.oddmuseum.com. So one wonders what he might make of our own National Museum of Country Life in Co Mayo. He might arrive at the wonderful "big house" setting of Turlough Park, four miles outside Castlebar, with little knowledge of the detail of mid-19th to mid-20th century Irish history. But if expecting a nostalgic interpretation of that period, just after the Famine and in the middle of struggles for land ownership, home rule and independence, he would be pulled up by the "health warning" on the ground floor.
Films such as The Quiet Man - set to be marked by 50th anniversary celebrations next month - and Man of Aran perpetuated the idea of a "heroic" and "idyllic" rural life in the Ireland of time, the graphic display points out. Similarly, Paul Henry images may have painted a rosy picture of man working with and against the elements. The reality was very different, with tuberculosis rife, continued hardship among rural communities and high mortality rates.
Life was a struggle - this is what the museum intends to portray, through a series of displays of artefacts and activities which aims to place them in an historical context. An "immense capacity for hard labour", together with a determination to be self-sufficient, ensured that skills and crafts such as thatching, spinning, weaving, basketmaking, wool carding, fishing and farming continued well into the 20th century.
Many of these skills are still remembered, if not practised. While work on the land was "unremitting", communities were close - by necessity - and were bound closer by the seasonal events such as St Bridget's Day, and Christmas, along with pattern days, weddings and wakes.
Since it opened to the public almost a year ago, the Museum of Country Life has attracted 125,500 visitors, well ahead of the target of 100,000. Last November it was awarded the Gulbenkian Foundation and Heritage Council of Ireland award of Museum of the Year, in association with the Northern Ireland Museums' Council. One judge described it as "a great addition to our cultural facilities" and "an indication of how our heritage can be a regenerating influence". The building has also won an award from the Royal Institute of Architects in Ireland. Located in the grounds of the former home of the Fitzgeralds, it represents a co-operative effort by Mayo County Council and the National Museum of Ireland - which had no permanent home for much of its folklife collection stored in Daingean, Co Offaly.
The high Victorian, Gothic-style house dating from 1865 was designed by Thomas Newenham Deane who, coincidentally, designed the National Museum building at Kildare Street, Dublin; two rooms of the house are open to the public. The exhibition gallery set into the terraces of the extensive Turlough Park gardens, was designed by the Office of Public Works, led by senior architect, Des Byrne.
Overall use of the exhibition space was a co-operative effort, involving the manager and keeper, Paul Doyle; curators, Dr Séamas McPhilib, Jude McCarthy, Clodagh Doyle and Aoife McBride; interpretative planner, Blue Sky Design of Ontario, Canada; exhibition designer, Anne Scroope Design, Dublin; graphic designer, Wendy Williams of Dublin and exhibition contractors, Gem Manufacturing Ltd. As an accompanying video, scripted by Theo Dorgan, explains, the National Museum of Ireland is "guardian of the nation's memory". It is an ambitious brief, and one which should be open to challenge - if the State institution allows for that.
Throughout the exhibition, small screens play archival film footage, including images of men making lobster pots from heather bushes, women spinning, weaving and making butter. It attempts to give a context to this collection of "ordinary things" - some of which are now less than ordinary, and command high prices, because such skills take the time that most of us don't have any more.
The museum has a very active education and outreach department with programmes geared towards school groups. It has planned a series of demonstrations this summer, including sheep shearing, spinning and making harvest knots. Next Sunday, there is a demonstration of lace-making by Eileen Cahill at 2.30 p.m., and there is a full programme for Heritage Week, starting on September 1st.
This week, the Meitheal Mara organisation based in Cork is building a currach in the grounds of Turlough Park house, led by Padraig Ó Duinnin. The plan is to construct a currach of the Belderrig type, used in this area of north Mayo in the 1930s. All are welcome to watch the work in progress until August 25th, but its seaworthiness may not be tested for too long. It is due to become part of the museum's collection.
The National Museum of Country Life is open from Tuesday to Saturday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday, 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Closed Mondays. Admission free, and the location in Turlough village is signposted off the N5 into Castlebar. The Education and Outreach department can be contacted on lo-call 1890 687 386.
