On Thursday 2nd of October, the sixth year art class were lucky enough to be given a talk by Donal Maguire, from the Centre for the Study of Irish Art (CSIA). We learned about the National Gallery, its colourful history and its many remarkable works much of which we were not aware of until now. We discovered a huge amount about archives and how archival material can be so useful to explore an artist’s life and to gain a more insightful understanding of their artwork. Donal was so kind as to bring a few samples of the gallery’s own archival artefacts such as catalogues, brochures and ephemeral material, some of which dated back to the very early 1900’s and even allowed us to explore them ourselves. The talk certainly widened our knowledge of a variety of artists, the important work of an archive and added to our appreciation of art. Thanks again to Donal Maguire for the fantastic talk, we really enjoyed it!
