Visual Art

The Irish Museum of Modern Art opened with a flourish in May 1991, so in May 2001 it celebrates its first and, most would agree…

The Irish Museum of Modern Art opened with a flourish in May 1991, so in May 2001 it celebrates its first and, most would agree, pretty successful decade. Yet the bitterness of the controversy over the directorship does threaten to cast a pall over festivities, unless everyone can kiss and make up. Taken with the smaller but equally stormy row surrounding the Visual Art Directorship of the Project Arts Centre, it could signal boisterous times ahead in a previously fairly staid world.

IMMA's current programme for the year is fairly low-key, and doesn't indicate any specifically celebratory birthday shows. Its main summer slot is a retrospective of the work of German-born performance, film artist and kinetic sculptor Rebecca Horn. Performance veteran Marina Abramovic curates a show devoted to new generation performance artists in the autumn. All of which is leavened by hatman Philip Treacy, who shows hatforms from April.

Challenges remain for Cork's Crawford Gallery, where the showpiece extension, though a striking architectural statement, has proved to be a problematic exhibition space. The rest of the gallery needs substantial upgrading and the city really has no excuse for not addressing it now. Sligo has its Model Arts & Niland Gallery up and running, which should make a tremendous impact on the north-west art scene. The upcoming Camille Souter retrospective - which will also be seen in Dublin's Gallagher Gallery - is a case in point.

The Gallagher, meanwhile, has a lively programme, including some enterprising shows from abroad and some good Irish-based events, including three of Noel Sheridan's installations from the 1970s and large-scale paintings by Richard Gorman. The Douglas Hyde is devoting its year's show to the theme House and Home including a show of Paul Seawright's Tallaght photographs, made as part of In Context, South Dublin Co Council's ambitious per cent for art scheme.

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There's a certain feeling of deja vu about the opening of the Francis Bacon studio at the Hugh Lane given the long build-up throughout 2000. It will be interesting to see if it draws the crowds. Will there be any strategic initiatives, though, along the lines of the one mooted in this newspaper, to secure the potential Sean Scully donation by earmarking the Crimea Banqueting Hall as an art gallery? If Belfast is to get its new gallery within five years, a target that has been mentioned, there should be moves towards selecting an architect through competition. Further afield, we will find out whether the director, quiet Swede Lars Nittve, makes his presence felt at the stunningly successful Tate Modern as the temporary exhibition spaces come on-stream. Or perhaps the question is whether Britain's modern art supremo, Sir Nicholas Serota, can manage to step back and let him get on with it.

Aidan Dunne