Take a Closer Look: Autumn 2025 Online Art Appreciation Course

Take part in our autumn online art appreciation course – wherever you are.

Our 8-week art appreciation evening courses are the perfect way to learn more about art. Discover little-known works from the Gallery’s collection, get to know old favourites in more depth, and explore other great collections of the world with our expert Art Historians and guest speakers.  Each course will take place online using Zoom webinar and will include time for a question and answer session where you can put your questions and comments to the facilitators. 

All sessions are recorded and made available to participants for three weeks afterwards to allow you to catch up, or watch again.

Autumn 2025 - For the love of Modernism: Ireland’s relationship with Modern Art from the 1920s to 1980s with Jessica Fahy

• Tuesday evenings, 6pm -7.15pm
• 7 October - 2 December (with a break on 28 October)  
• Tickets: €150 - available here
• 20% discount for Friends of the Gallery
• 10% discount Over 65’s/unwaged/students

About the course: 

This course will examine the relationship between the Irish state and the advent of Modernism in the visual arts. It can certainly be described as a difficult adjustment with a reluctance by the Irish state and the art institutions to support Modernist artists. In the first few decades of the Free State and Irish Republic many artworks were see as unaccomplished or even corrupting due to the rejection of the Academic style by the artist. The ideas around ‘proper’ art were not just about expected levels of skill in naturalism or realism but also moralistic. It would seem that the Irish public were not trusted to make up their own minds or to be able to understand or be confronted with this new art. Yet on an international stage, it was often the most avant-garde artist chosen to represent Ireland - arguably as this new nation wanted to be seen as a modern and progressive country. 

The first Rosc exhibition in 1967 brought works by the most important artists from around the world to Dublin, and included ancient Irish artworks, but no contemporary Irish Artists. Living artists were eventually included, which was followed by a boom in state-funded commissions, which were not always well received by the public - an opinion still heard today. 

Week 1 | 7 October - New Art for a New Nation?
In the first session, we look at the Irish Free State and the art institutions, art policies, education programmes, the press, and the reactions to modernism.

Week 2 | 14 October - Outside influence
Looking at the ways Irish artists interacted with modern art movements through travel and education abroad as well as artist or their work coming to Ireland from the Loan exhibition of 1899 to the White Stag group during the Emergency. 

Week 3 | 21 October - Artists on the Edge 
An examination of the formation and development of the Irish Exhibition of Living Art and the art of its members.

No session on 28 October

Week 4 | 4 November - Artists on an International Stage
Tracing the participation of Irish artists in international exhibitions in Europe and beyond, from diplomatic gifts to international expositions to the Venice Biennale.

Week 5 | 11 November - Bringing Modern Art to Ireland
The importance and impact of the government-endorsed Rosc exhibition, which brought modern art to Ireland officially.

Week 6 | 18 November - Politics and the Arts 
Guest Speaker: Professor Kevin Rafter, Full Professor of Political Communication, Dublin City University 
In this lecture, Kevin Rafter will draw on his book Taoisigh and the Arts (2022) to look afresh at major political figures in post-1922 Ireland through the work of writers and visual artists, and examine the legacy of national leaders while considering the priority these politicians placed on the arts during their time in office. Taoisigh and the Arts was described as ‘consistently entertaining and informative’ in the Dublin Review of Books and as ‘a gripping history of the State’s treatment of artists and writers’ in the Irish Independent. A review in Books Ireland said it ‘should be in the in-tray of all Irish politicians.’

Week 7 | 25 November - 'The People's Home; Irish and European Architecture 1940 - 1980'
Guest Speaker: David Jameson, Architect
In this session, architect David Jameson will provide an overview of the major modern architectural movements in Europe and contemporary developments in Ireland in the post-war period.

Week 8 | 2 December -  Modernism(s) and the Irish
Guest speaker: Catherine Marshall, Art historian and Curator 
Ireland's relationship to international culture was dominated by two things; the country's history of colonisation and its geographic isolation. Combined, they led to a determination to assert its new nationhood and a conflict between that need and its desire to actively participate in the rapidly-changing world of the twentieth century. For artists it meant forging a role at home as well as an international presence both of which were essential for the future of the visual arts in Ireland. This overview will look at their successes and failures and their impact on a new century.

About the tutor:

Jessica Fahy is a freelance Art Historian. She is on the lecturer and guide panels for the National Gallery of Ireland, UCD Access and Lifelong Learning Centre and the Hugh Lane Gallery. She gives talks and tours across Ireland, abroad and online on all areas of Western Art from the 14th century to the present day.  She is a regular contributor on RTÉ radio for Arena. She has a MLitt in Art History from UCD where she also received her undergraduate degree with English as her joint major. She completed her MA in Italian Renaissance Art at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London in 2007.

Guest Speakers: 

David Jameson is a founder member of tún –architecture + design, a design and research based architecture practice founded in 2015 with Rose Bonner Alexander and Paul Fox. The practice recently completed Harcourt Terrace Educate Together National School, prototyping a new arrangement of classroom spaces to allow additional informal learning and social spaces. This model has since been adopted by the Department of Education as a template for new schools. The school won the 2025 AAI and RIAI awards. In parallel to built practice, David is a studio tutor in TU Dublin, and researches the cultural and built landscape of Ireland’s peatlands, through the Bog Bothy project.

Catherine Marshall is a curator, art historian, Founding Head of Collections at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (1995 -2007), member of Na Cailleacha art collective. She has lectured at TCD, UCD and the NCAD and was Visual Arts adviser to the Arts Council’s Touring Experiment, 2007–8. She was co-editor of Vol. V Twentieth Century, The Art and Architecture of Ireland, Yale 2014, and Irish Art 1920-2020 Perspectives on Change, RIA, 2022. Curatorial Projects include; The Engagement Project, 2014 – 2021, exhibitions of the IMMA Collections in China, United States of America, Canada, Britain,  and most recently The School of Hibernia (after Raphael), 2024, Trinity College Dublin. She was awarded an honorary doctorate in the History of Art by University College Dublin in 2019.

Kevin Rafter is Full Professor of Political Communication at Dublin City University and a former political journalist. He has written extensively on Irish politics and media, including acclaimed biographies and histories of key political parties. His latest book, 'Dillon Rediscovered', has been widely praised and was described as ‘vivid, compelling’ (Sunday Times), ‘breaks new ground’ (Irish Times), ‘fascinating’ (Irish Examiner) and ‘truly exceptional’ (Irish Independent). He has chaired both the Arts Council and Culture Ireland, and was a Fulbright Scholar at Boston College in 2024.
 

Buying this course as a gift? 

Once you have purchased the ticket, contact [email protected] to confirm the name of the recipient, and we will ensure they are sent all correspondence. If you would like us to send them an e-mail confirming that this was purchased as a gift for them, we can also do this.