Minister for the Arts Séamus Brennan has promised to open up major museums and art galleries to greater audiences by introducing more flexible and extended opening hours.
Mr Brennan said he wanted to breathe new life into the "aspiration" of giving everyone the opportunity to experience and enjoy Ireland's wealth of art, culture and creativity. There was still a long road to travel towards that aspiration, but good progress had been made on practical solutions such as longer opening times, he said.
"We need to get away from the traditional and often rigid nine-to-five opening times and build in a degree of flexibility that reflects our changed lifestyles and use of leisure time," he said. He was speaking at the launch yesterday of the Irish Museum of Modern Art's (Imma) programme for 2008.
Mr Brennan paid tribute to Imma for its efforts to provide wider access to its art collections by extending opening hours in the summer months. He urged museum officials to work with his department in structuring an even more flexible approach to opening hours in the future.
He said Imma, which last year received a record 485,000 visitors, 40 per cent from overseas, enjoyed a growing reputation as an acclaimed venue for the exhibition of national and international modern art.
The highlight of the museum's programme is, arguably, an exhibition of Mexican modernist art featuring works by its most famous exponents, Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. The show, which includes 17 works by Kahlo on loan from the Gelman collection in Mexico, opens in late November.
Imma director Enrique Juncosa also highlighted a forthcoming survey of the African work of Spanish painter Miquel Barcelo and an exhibition of Irish contemporary art drawn from corporate collections held in Ireland. A number of group shows are also planned, including a joint presentation of little-known works by writers Hans Christian Andersen and William Burroughs.
Irish exhibitions on the programme include a retrospective of the career of Cecil King, who died in 1986, and a collection of paintings, watercolours and drawings by William McKeown.
The programme also features the first survey in this country of the work of Jack Pierson, the American photographer, sculptor and artist, as well as two solo exhibitions by young artists, Ulla von Brandenburg from Germany and Janaina Tschaepe from Brazil.
Imma is also increasingly sending its paintings on tour; currently 152 works from its collection are on show in San Sebastian and Valencia in Spain, and the Irish Embassy in The Hague. Other works will be displayed later in the year at exhibitions in Barcelona, Casablanca, Lyon and Beijing.
This year, the museum, which is housed in the Royal Hospital Kilmainham, will receive €8 million in funding from the Government.
ON VIEW: Opening hours
There are few more forlorn aspects to Dublin on a winter Monday than the sight of tourists finding something to do. Most of the capital's main museums and art galleries remain closed on Mondays, in a tradition that now seems out of step with changes in society and the growth of tourism.
In promising yesterday to change this situation, Minister for Arts Séamus Brennan said he wanted to get away from rigid "nine to five" opening times.
However, in reality, the situation is even worse, as most galleries don't open until 10am at the earliest, and are closed by the time most people finish work. Imma for example, where Mr Brennan made his pledge, opens from 10am to 5.30pm, Tuesday to Saturday (opening at 10.30am on Wednesdays). The National Museum opens from 10am to 5pm on these days and the Hugh Lane Gallery opens from 10am to 6pm (5pm on Fridays and Saturdays). However, the day when galleries and museums most fail the public is Sunday, one of the busiest times of the week for tourists, and traditionally a family day.
Yet Imma and the National Gallery don't open until noon and the National Gallery is open for a paltry three hours between 2pm and 5pm.
Museums close on certain days of the week in other cities, and Monday is traditionally such a day in Paris. Usually though, there are later opening evenings in compensation, but not generally in Dublin. The National Gallery, which stays opens until 8.30pm on Thursdays, is an exception.
