Crawford Art Gallery facts for kids
| Áiléar Crawford | |
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Main entrance on Emmet Place
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| Established | 1850 (as Cork School of Design) 1880 (as Crawford Art School) 1979 (as Crawford Art Gallery) |
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| Location | Emmet Place, Cork, Ireland |
| Type | Municipal art gallery |
| Key holdings | Greek and Roman sculpture casts (1818) |
| Collection size | c.4,000 works |
| Visitors | 265,438 (2019) |
The Crawford Art Gallery (Irish: Áiléar Crawford) is a cool place in Cork, Ireland, where you can see amazing art. People often call it the Crawford. It became a 'National Cultural Institution' in 2006. This means it's a really important place for art in Ireland. The gallery shows both old and new art. In 2019, over 265,000 people visited! The gallery is named after William Horatio Crawford.
Contents
The Story of the Crawford Art Gallery
The Crawford Art Gallery is located in the center of Cork city. The building itself is very old, built in 1724. It was first used as the Cork Customs House. This is where taxes were collected on goods coming into the city.
From Customs House to Art School
In the 1830s, the building became home to the Royal Cork Institution (RCI). The RCI helped to open the Cork School of Design in this same building in 1850. This school taught people how to create art and design.
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In the early 1880s, the school got bigger. This was thanks to money and support from the Crawford family. They were important landowners and brewers in the area. Because of their help, the school was renamed the Crawford School of Art in 1885.
Becoming an Art Gallery
In 1979, the art school moved to a different location. The Crawford building then became mainly an art gallery and museum. The museum buildings were made much larger in the year 2000. This allowed them to show even more art.
What You Can See: The Art Collections
The Crawford Art Gallery has many interesting artworks. Some of the oldest pieces are copies of famous Greek and Roman statues. These copies are called "casts." They were brought to Cork from the Vatican in 1818.
Famous Casts and Their Journey
The Royal Cork Institution bought these casts from another art group in Cork. That group had received them from the Prince Regent, who later became George IV of the United Kingdom. He got them from Pope Pius VII. The Pope had asked a famous sculptor named Antonio Canova to make plaster copies of statues in the Vatican. Some of these copies include the Belvedere Torso, Apollo Belvedere, and Laocoön and His Sons.
Art by Local Talent
Because the gallery was once an art school, it has many works by people who taught or studied there. You can see art by James Brenan, who was the headmaster from 1860 to 1889. There are also works by students like Henry Jones Thaddeus and William Gerard Barry.
Other Amazing Artists
The collection also includes sculptures by artists like John Hogan and Eilis O'Connell. You can see beautiful stained-glass art by Harry Clarke and Evie Hone. There are paintings by famous artists such as William Orpen, Jack B. Yeats, and Nano Reid. The gallery also features photographs by Bob Carlos Clarke.
The gallery also offers special programs for learning about art. They also host new art shows that change over time.
Exciting Plans for the Future
In March 2023, plans were approved to make the gallery even better. These plans will add a lot more space to the gallery, about 1,919 square meters. They will also update and rearrange 3,641 square meters of the existing building. The work will also change the main entrance to face Emmet Place. This big project is set to begin in Autumn 2024.
More to Explore
- Royal Cork Institution
- List of tourist attractions in Ireland
