Ms Kearney has won scores of accolades over her career, including the Jerome Hynes Fellowship on the Clore Leadership Programme, which is the highest individual award offered by the Arts Council of Ireland.
As Director of The Glucksman, do you consider UCC students and staff to be your primary audience, or do you reach out to people further afield?
Future, current and past UCC students are perhaps our most important audience – we want to be a place that encourages students to try art as an audience member, or as a creative participant. A recent article on Cork City in Cara Magazine (Aer Lingus In-Flight magazine) was by a UCC student who said she spent most of her time in college at the Glucksman… I'm not sure we are always aiming for that level of cultural commitment! I also know there are lots of students who might never set foot in the building, so in the best possible way the student body challenges us to remain relevant. Of course, we also work with colleagues across all four colleges and encourage teaching in the Glucksman, as well as offering our own PhD accredited module on curating in the public realm for UCC students. I'd like to think that as a public space, we are a place that enables graduates to come back to visit, and if not exactly relive their student years, at least know that they are welcome on campus.
What kind of outreach programmes are The Glucksman engaged with?
We are very committed to wide access to university education, and we do a lot of work with schools, teachers and disadvantaged groups who might not have a tradition of attending university. UCC Students often intern and volunteer with us to support these outreach activities, such as our work with children living in Direct Provision. In some sense the Glucksman beckons people to come through the Main Gates (a bigger barrier than I realised) and see that UCC could be a third–level choice for them. We also do music gigs, screenings, events with student societies, and perhaps even the great coffee in Fresco might help to bring people in to check the art out for themselves!
The Gluckman previously held an exhibition called "Living Loss: The Experience of Illness in Art." Illness is often a deeply traumatic experience for people and their loved ones. Was it difficult for you, while curating the exhibition, to find pieces that did not inadvertently glamourise illness?
The artist, Jo Spence, took on this very theme in photographs in the exhibition that documented her own experience of breast cancer, and leukemia. She took self-portraits posing as a glamour model with her removed breast clearly in view – it is challenging work for the viewer, but it reminds us to think about illness from the patient's perspective.
I was very fortunate to work closely on the development of the show with UCC colleagues in Medicine & Health, and I was reminded by Professor Fergus Shanahan not to forget about the rage that the patient feels as well as the sense of dread, loss and relief that accompanies different stages of treatment.
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