Curator Peter Murray's description of the £2.3 million extension to the Crawford Municipal Art Gallery in Cork as "just roofing over a void" is accurate in more than one sense; there is a void at the heart of all the activity in the visual arts in the city, and the gallery's new floors are destined to fill it. In terms of the fine arts especially, the experience in Cork has been the direct opposite of, for example, the theatre: in theatre it is a case of too many temples and not enough vestal virgins - there are plenty of venues, but few productions with which to fill them. For painting, sculpture, installation, ceramics and almost the entire range of art and design there is immense - and intense - creativity, but no place which can give it adequate display space.
It has always been held in the city that despite the vigour of centres such as Triskel or the smaller but dedicated venues such as the Lavit Gallery it is essentially the role of the Crawford to lead the way, both in generating and in exhibiting the variety and fervour of Cork's artistic life. However, its curator is acutely aware of its wider role: that is the importation to Cork of the artistic currents of the nation and even of the world. It is this traffic which feeds creativity, and which this major capital investment will bring to the city at last.
Cork is still a small city and the health of its arts community depends on mutual loyalty, yet behind the agreement that the gallery has fulfilled most, if not all, of its obligations under its obvious mandate, lies an awareness of how unfairly difficult a task this can be. The gallery is unique in Ireland in that it is run by the Department of Education through the City of Cork VEC; its board, on the other hand, tries to encapsulate the "municipal" element with the civic great and good well represented. These two strands dominate its policy-making and there is a justified perception that these will not be adequate if the gallery is to meet the challenges of its future.
It cannot fulfil its municipal role on an acquisitions budget which has to be harrowed out of maintenance allocations and which this year amounted to £20,000. There can be no question of bidding for important Irish work on the national market, even less of a presence internationally. Nor can the gallery do anything much to protect the artistic heritage of the city, apart from some vibrant modern local pieces and a find, in a Dublin antique shop, of a mid-19th century watercolour by Richard Robert Scanlon, a former headmaster at the Cork school of art.
Nor can the educational obligation be much more than an ideal in an institution where the exhibitions officer and education officer are employed through the FAS Community Employment Scheme. Surely the Vocational Education Committee was never meant to be so direct a beneficiary of FAS? Surely it is grossly inappropriate for a gallery of this importance to have to depend on such a contract arrangement for two of its most significant appointments?
These questions are neither asked nor answered publicly in the gallery, but they are asked outside it. For the new development is viewed not as an incident in the life of the gallery, but as a departure-point for the arts in Cork. It comes as the Sculpture Factory enjoys a deserved reputation, the College of Art and Design continues to upgrade its services as a teaching resource for the region, and the Arts Council allocation of £250,000 primes the refurbishment scheme for Cork Printmakers and the Backwater Gallery at Wandesford Quay.
It could appear, from these facts, as if Cork's designation as a centre of excellence for the visual arts is justified. But practitioners say otherwise, and while identifying the absence of exhibition space as one impediment, their chief, if apparently contradictory, complaint is the local nature of so many of the Crawford's exhibitions.
There is an irony in this which cannot be lost on Peter Murray, a founder member of the Sirius Project in Cobh: there, in the restored waterside premises of the former Royal Cork Yacht Club, facilities for visiting artists of international repute have been provided in a scheme which links them into the teaching and gallery functions both of the Crawford gallery and of the College of Art and Design. The symmetry of purpose and location speaks for itself: from these very steps into the harbour the Sirius was boarded for the voyage which, under Captain Richard Roberts, became the first crossing of the Atlantic (Cork to New York) by a steamship unaided by sail.
The very design - bold, floating, glass-panelled and expansive - of the extension to the Crawford Gallery has an Antipodean flair to it, while the cladding of the roof is a red-brick link to the characteristic material of the existing gallery. That cohesion promotes the imagery of art as both inclusive and outgoing, local and world-wide. The design is, of course, essentially European. That is its integrity. But its visionary sophistication says a lot about what is going to be expected of the Crawford in the future.
Taking the building, and the arts in Ireland, into the 21st century, the design by Eric van Egeraat and Associates of Rotterdam marries contemporary architecture with its object of housing the gallery's modern art collection, yielding more space for the prestigious permanent collection and for the public's greater enjoyment of both.
It worries Peter Murray that the major financing had to come via the ERDF fund, and while he is extremely grateful to the former TD Toddy O'Sullivan for supporting the proposal, he hopes that the day will come when the arts receive funding for their own sake. The Department of Education has committed money as well as personnel to the project, giving £600,000 for essential internal upgrading - including fire safety features and a new lift - all forming part of an integrated development plan.
"The beauty of it is that the design team is working on all parts of the building", says Peter Murray, long a stoical observer of the complex problems involved in the ownership and running of the gallery. "A pipe in one room is the responsibility, for example, of the Department of Education, but when it goes through a wall it becomes the business of the Arts Council!"
The building began as a customs house, its designer unknown, although Murray accepts that it is more likely to be the work of the Dutch journeyman architect and builder Leuventhen (also responsible for The Red House in Youghal) rather than that of the often-quoted Edward Lovett Pearce. This provenance completes another creative cycle, linking the architectural traditions of the Netherlands with the adventurous invigorating maritime origin of the Customs House of 1724. The extension covers a space at the rear of the building, but part of its impact will be on Half Moon Street which connects the gallery with the north channel of the Lee and which is named after the English ship which landed in New York as part of a 16th-century colonising expedition.
Peter Murray, who joined the Crawford in 1984, says that the dramatic form of the extension and its purpose in terms of space and facilities will revitalise the awareness of the visual arts in Cork. He is talking about a gallery which currently houses 20 temporary exhibitions a year and which is now anticipating a major new role in the artistic vitality of the city and the country - and which has the same number of permanent staff as it had 150 years ago.
