Celebrating St. Brigid’s Day at Mayo's Museum of Country Life
FEBRUARY 1 marks Lá Fhéile Bríde or St. Brigid’s Day.
There are many traditions and customs associated with this feast-day, so plan a visit to the National Musem of Ireland - Country Life, Turlough Park, Castlebar, to learn more about these traditions and customs and view the St. Brigid exhibit in the museum galleries.
For those who want to try making their own St. Brigid’s Crosses, visit www.musuem.ie to see Tom Doyle, education officer, give a demonstration on the making of many varieties of the cross.
Our Irish Chair: Tradition Revisited
Visit a new temporary exhibition exploring the design and crafting tradition of an engaging Irish chair type - and the creativity it continues to inspire.
Our Irish Chair: Tradition Revisited features the National Museum of Ireland’s full collection of 16 Tuam/Sligo chairs. It is the first time this full collection of chairs has gone on display together.
The exhibition also includes a public art project from Tuam and a selection of striking, modern interpretations of the Tuam/Sligo chair, designed and crafted by students of the National Centre for Excellence in Furniture Design and Technology at GMIT Letterfrack.
1845: Memento Mori
View a stunning glass installation by Seattle-based Irish artist Paula Stokes, which is on display in the Landlord’s Library at the National Museum of Ireland - Country Life.
Consisting of 1,845 hand-blown glass potatoes, 1845: Memento Mori is a famine memorial which has taken the artist 15 years to complete.
The title of the project references the year the potato blight came to Ireland, marking the beginning of a period of mass starvation, disease, and emigration.
The exhibition is on display until May.
One Day: 40 Sunrises
See a new exhibition of 40 paintings depicting sunrises from around the world, on display now in the Courtyard Gallery (next to the café).
One Day: 40 Sunrises is a project by Mayo-based artist Ian Wieczorek. It presents the experience of sunrise on a particular day in various locations throughout the world, as experienced live through webcams during lockdown in Ireland. The paintings are based on real-time screenshots ‘grabbed’ from online streaming, harvested from the internet by Wieczorek over a 24-hour period on July 15, 2020, tracking sunrise around the globe.
The number of paintings, 40, references the notion of quarantine, a word deriving from the Italian quaranta giorni meaning ‘forty days’, the period required before ships could disembark in port at the time of a much earlier pandemic, the Black Death.
Book your visit
In order to facilitate a safe and enjoyable visit, booking is now required for admission to the exhibition galleries at the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life. Book your free ticket at www.museum.ie.
The exhibition galleries are open Tuesday to Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., and Sunday to Monday from 1 to 5 p.m.