Eire/Land

From its earliest history, Ireland has been contested land, claimed by waves of invaders, each attempting to inscribe and possess the island territory. The éire/Land exhibition, to be held at the McMullen Museum from February to May 2003, is the first major art exhibition to examine this theme. From medieval topographical surveys and Celtic artifacts to nineteenth-century landscapes and the expressionist art of the present day, éire/Land collects pieces that collectively reveal Ireland's contested past—including works by Dierdre O'Mahony, Jack Butler Yeats, Sean Keating, and architect Brian Tolle. Drawing on original research by prominent international scholars and by the largest and most distinguished Irish studies faculty in North America, this catalog relates those works and artifacts to new scholarship in a variety of disciplines, lending Ireland's visual history the cultural, historical, and political context it deserves.

Vera Kreilkamp is professor of Irish studies at Boston College, coeditor of Éire-Ireland: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Irish Studies, and author of The Anglo-Irish Novel and the Big House. She has edited two previous McMullen Museum exhibition catalogs of Irish art: Éire/Land and America’s Eye: Irish Painting from the Collection of Brian P. Burns, with Adele Dalsimer.