THE Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Modern Art will increase its exhibition space by 50 per cent by the year 2000, according to an ambitious plan announced in Dublin yesterday.
Under the plan, Dublin, Vision 2000, which was launched by the Lord Mayor of Dublin, Mr Brendan Lynch, a municipal arts centre, a theatre and a glass roofed winter garden, would also be built in premises adjoining the present gallery.
The planned extension of the gallery will cost around £4.1 million, £0.5m of which has been awarded by the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht.
The gallery now intends to seek the necessary extra funding from private sources. The full colour glossy brochure for the fund raising campaign also launched yesterday, is clearly aimed at American benefactors significant figures appear in dollars.
The Irish American art collector, Mr Brian Burns, the director of the Ireland Funds, has already made the first private contribution to the fund with a gift of $100,000.
The planned building programme is only part of what the city manager, Mr John Fitzgerald, hopes will be a rejuvenation of a major swathe of Dublin's north inner centre.
These plans involve a restoration of the axis running from Parnell Square, along O'Connell Street and across the Liffey into Westmoreland Street.
Plans for the Parnell Square area include the opening up of the north end of the Garden of Remembrance, a narrowing of traffic lanes around the north side of the square and the establishment of what Mr Fitzgerald described as a "cultural enclave" around the "jewel in the crown" - the Hugh Lane Gallery.