Remarks by President McAleese at the Opening of the Lewis Glucksman Art Gallery UCC
Remarks by President McAleese at the Opening of the Lewis Glucksman Art Gallery University College, Cork, Friday, 15th October
Dia dhíbh go léir. Tá an-athás orm bheith anseo i bhur measc inniú. Go raibh míle maith agaibh as ucht bhur bhfáilte caoin.
This is a great day for this University, for this city and for me. It is my very great pleasure to be back here at UCC today to perform the task of opening the impressive Lewis Glucksman Gallery, on the banks of your own lovely Lee. My thanks to College President, Professor Gerard Wrixon for his kind invitation to be to be here today. It seems just a few weeks since I last visited the college to deliver the Philip Monahan Memorial Lecture but it was in fact back in February. Your welcome today was every bit as warm and generous as then and for that I am grateful to you all.
This gallery is a wonderfully impressive achievement by any standards - a structure that impresses for its drama and its confidence and is surely destined to lure people to explore its architectural beauty as well as the many treasures it will play host to in the years ahead. All credit and compliments to architects Sheila O'Donnell and John Tuomey whose imaginative use of space has created something to be very proud of.
Throughout the world educational institutions have taken up the burden and the challenge of becoming what the church had been in the middle-ages, a patron of the arts and UCC has played its part throughout its history. Ireland in recent years, has generated a new prosperity, but it is not all purely material. A new movement has touched Irish life. If it has a single core, it is probably the engagement of Irish intellect with Irish problems. For too long this island witnessed the incessant haemorrhaging of its people, their giftedness and talent and energies to be harnessed elsewhere, never at home, for home meant dole queues, lack of opportunity, unrealised dreams. The metamorphosis that has taken place in Ireland since has created an exciting new landscape, where opportunities are many, where our economy is booming, an Ireland to which many have returned and fewer are leaving. Those new times bear witness to the blossoming of creativity across many facets of Irish life - in music, song and dance, writing, poetry, painting, theatre and film-making – creativity that has deservedly achieved world-wide recognition. The future for the arts in Ireland looks bright as we increasingly elaborate, celebrate and showcase the great talent and genius of our people at home and abroad. And now we have this bright new platform on which to exhibit the very best of art.
To undertake a project of the magnitude and complexity of this gallery is a formidable challenge and only doable because of the supportive partnership between the University, the City, its artistic community and the ever generous Lou and Loretta Glucksman.
The creation of this great art gallery in Cork is an emblem of Lewis Glucksman’s life, his legendary philanthropy and his goodness to Ireland. Dr. Glucksman and his wife Loretta are simply the most heartfelt friends of Ireland and they have a deep passion for Ireland’s future. W.B.Yeats words could have been written of them,
Look up in the sun's eye and give
What the exultant heart calls good
That some new day may breed the best
Because you gave, not what they would,
But the right twigs for an eagle's nest!
The Gallery is some eagle’s nest. It is an opportunity and an adventure, a door into many worlds not least the world of the human imagination and the self and I hope that Cork’s students, citizens and visitors will let it take them on many soaring journeys. It is too, a perfect bridge from the academic community to the city, a place where the artistic life of the city and the educational life of the university can spontaneously egg each other on and enjoy all the synergies that process will generate. So it is both a campus space and a city space complementing the National Sculpture Factory, the Opera House, the Crawford, and the Firkin Crane Institute of Choreography and Dance, to form the artistic hub of the City.
The development by the University of the Degree in Art History and its appointment of Jim Elkins from the Art Institute in Chicago as full-time professor in Art History will surely enrich this process immensely.
Cork is about to be crowned European Capital of Culture in 2005 and there is no doubt that the tiara now sports a new and very brilliant diamond. On behalf of everyone here I congratulate Fiona Kearney, Director of the Lewis Glucksman Gallery and wish her and her team well as they set about the task of encouraging the pursuit of excellence in intellectual and artistic discourse in Cork and nationwide.
The two exhibitions on display at the moment, the stunning American paintings on loan from the Grey Art Gallery of New York University, and the perceptive Durer exhibition in association with the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin, are harbingers of good things to come and a fine indication that already the centre of artistic gravity is being pulled relentlessly southwards.
To the people who made it possible to turn the vision into a reality, on behalf of the University, of the people of Cork, and of the people of this island, let me say, to paraphrase Yeats this time,
Think where man's glory most begins and ends
And say our glory was we had such friends.
I now declare the Lewis Glucksman Gallery officially open.
Is iontach an obair atá ar siúl agaibh agus guím gach rath air san am atá le teacht. Comhghairdeas libh arís. Go raibh maith agaibh.