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 (which is Áiléar Crawford in Irish) is a really cool public art gallery and museum in Cork, Ireland. People often call it just the Crawford. In 2006, it became a 'National Cultural Institution'. This means it's a very important place for culture in Ireland. The gallery is all about visual arts, both old and new. Lots of visitors come here every year to see its amazing collections. The gallery is named after William Horatio Crawford, who helped it a lot.
Contents
History of the Crawford Art Gallery
The Crawford Art Gallery is right in the middle of Cork city. It's in a building that used to be the Cork Customs House. This old building was first built way back in 1724.
In the 1830s, the Royal Cork Institution (RCI) moved into the Customs House. The RCI helped to open the Cork School of Design there in 1850. This school taught people how to create art and design.
In the early 1880s, the school got bigger. This happened because the Crawford family gave money and support. They were important landowners and brewers in the area. Because of their help, the school was renamed the Crawford School of Art in 1885.
In 1979, the art school moved to a different place. After that, the building became mainly an art gallery and museum. The museum buildings were made much bigger in the year 2000.
What You Can See: The Collections
The Crawford Art Gallery has many interesting artworks. Some of the oldest things in the gallery are plaster casts of ancient Greek and Roman statues. These were made by a famous artist named Antonio Canova. They came to Cork from the Vatican in 1818.
The Royal Cork Institution got these casts from another group in Cork. That group had received them from the Prince Regent. He later became George IV of the United Kingdom. The Prince Regent had received them from Pope Pius VII. The Pope had asked Antonio Canova to make these plaster copies from real statues in the Vatican. Some of these copies include famous works like the Belvedere Torso, Apollo Belvedere, and Laocoön and His Sons.
Because the gallery was once an art school, it has many works by people who studied or taught there. These include pieces by James Brenan, who was the headmaster from 1860 to 1889. You can also see art by students like Henry Jones Thaddeus and William Gerard Barry.
The gallery's collection also features works by other talented artists. These include sculptors like John Hogan and Eilis O'Connell. There are also beautiful stained-glass pieces by Harry Clarke and Evie Hone. You can see paintings by William Orpen (who was a student of James Brenan), Jack B. Yeats, and Nano Reid. The gallery even has photographs by Bob Carlos Clarke.
The gallery also runs special education programs and outreach activities. They often host new and traveling art exhibitions too.
Future Plans for the Gallery
In March 2023, plans were approved to make the gallery even better. If these plans happen, the gallery will become much larger. It would gain an extra 1,919 square meters of space. Also, 3,641 square meters of the current building would be updated and rearranged.
These changes would also turn the gallery to face Emmet Place. This means the main entrance might look different. The work is planned to start in the autumn of 2024.
See also
- Royal Cork Institution
- List of tourist attractions in Ireland
