Painted into a corner?The Impressionists exhibition at the National Gallery of Ireland has attracted nearly as many punters in its first 10 days as the Bacon Studio, at the Hugh Lane Gallery, did in six months last year. The Impressionists are pulling in about 1,500 a day - and about 2,200 on a Thursday, when the exhibition is open in the evening. That's about 16,400 attendances. The Bacon Studio pulled in just over 17,000 people between June and December last year.
There is, of course, no comparison between these two pay-in shows (€10 for the Impressionists, with no free access; €7 for the Bacon, with a concessionary rate of €3.50 and free admission for under-18s and on Tuesday mornings).
The Impressionists are an international brand name, and much of the attraction of the show must lie in the new Millennium Wing, in which it is housed.
The contrast is still invidious for the Hugh Lane, however, which sank £1.5 million (€1.9 million) of public money into bringing the Bacon Studio to Dublin (the figure includes input from the Millennium Commission and the Ireland Funds). Bringing the Impressionists to Ireland cost €950,000 of public money.
The new wing cost the Exchequer €10.7 million, however.
A fairer comparison can be made, perhaps, with IMMA's Andy Warhol exhibition, which ran for four months, between November 1997 and March 1998, and attracted 142,000 visitors. The exhibition had no entrance fee and these were record attendance figures for IMMA - but still the comparison with the figures for the Bacon Studio are galling. The Warhol had in its favour the fact that it was going to move on, of course, whereas people may feel they have a lifetime to see the Bacon. The problem is, they may never be motivated enough to go.
Making waves
A school hall in Kildare town was the rather unlikely-sounding setting for a stunning debut at the weekend. Donal O'Kelly's The Cambria is a new play about Frederick Douglass, the abolitionist and escaped slave, and his 1845 voyage from the US to Ireland.
It had its first public reading on Saturday at an Afri conference called Shelter from the Storm. O'Kelly's fans won't be surprised to hear that The Cambria combines powerful dramatic rhythms with pointed political commentary about the treatment of such refugees in Ireland today. The reading was staged by a topnotch cast, including O'Kelly, to gorgeous musical accompaniment by a capella duo Eala. O'Kelly's good news was that the one-act play has already been picked up by BBC Radio 4.
Diverting tale
Temple Bar Properties' failure to secure funding from the Arts Council for its live cultural programme, including the Diversions festival in the summer, is being appealed. The council is therefore unwilling to comment on it in detail.
It has said, however, that it accepted no new applications for revenue funding this year. Previously, the council subvented the cultural programme on a project-by-project basis, and the council says Temple Bar Properties is free to apply for project funding this year.
Could the council also be putting it up to Dublin Corporation to put serious money into live entertainment in Temple Bar? Increasingly it looks for local councils to become involved in local festivals. Last year, the corporation put £1,500 (€1,900) into Diversions; overall, Temple Bar's cultural programme cost £200,000 (€254,000). Funding decisions for arts projects this year will be made at the city council's meeting on Monday.
Dance nation
Interestingly enough, the International Dance Festival will close on May 25th and 26th with dancing in the streets of Temple Bar. Limerick's Daghda Dance Company will stage Yoshiko Chuma's Reverse Psychology, an exploration of 100 years of history in three acts, at Project arts centre and outdoor locations close by.
The performances will combine movement with spoken word, live music and film. This is a coup for the company, as Catherine Nunes, the festival's director, has always intended the event to showcase only Irish work that is of a very high quality alongside her stellar programme of international work.
Picture this
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is bidding farewell to its now rather arcane policy of purchasing artists' work to help support them by staging a number of exhibitions of its collection.
The Public Eye: 50 Years Of The Arts Council Collection, at the Ormeau Baths Gallery, in Belfast, until March 16th, includes work by a myriad of major artists, including William Scott, F.E. McWilliams, Louis le Brocquy, Willie Doherty, Basil Blackshaw, Rita Duffy, Micky Donnelly and Dermot Seymour.
A satellite exhibition of political art is running at the Context Gallery, in Derry, which includes, again, Duffy and Donnelly, as well as Andrew Coombes, Brendan Ellis, Michael Farrell, Joe McWilliams, Victor Sloan and Patrick Coogan.
The council is moving from purchasing work to direct funding.
