Original article here - Irish insulted in major Washington museum exhibit claims scholar
The two curators of the Washington exhibit on Renaissance Ireland, which has been slammed for portraying the British as benign invaders by a leading Irish scholar, have defended their work.
Thomas Herron and Brendan Kane claim the letter criticising them by Irish academic Coilin Owens unfairly caricatures their work.
“As co-curators of the exhibit "Nobility and Newcomers in Renaissance Ireland," which has recently opened at the Folger Shakespeare Library, we are disappointed to find such an inaccurate and incomplete account of the exhibit as offered in your article. We would have appreciated being contacted so as to answer some of the charges against our exhibit before your article went into print.
Read More Irish news here
“For example, your article was based (mainly) on the testimony of Professor Coilin Owens, who states erroneously that "Purporting to represent Anglo-Irish relations, cultural and political, between 1580 and 1700, [the exhibit's] major claim is that the period was not marked by conflict but by 'cooperation.'"
“This is simply not true. In both the exhibit and the accompanying catalog, we clearly highlight war (such as the Nine Years' War), rebellion (such as the Kildare and Desmond rebellions) and colonization (such as the Munster and Ulster Plantations, and Cromwell's transplantations) as major (indeed traumatic) factors in the history of the period, which for the purposes of the exhibit encompasses roughly the years 1450-1660 (and not "1580-1700" as reported by Owens). We clearly mention conflict in the opening panel of the exhibit (and in the opening to the catalog) and highlight it throughout the exhibit.
Original article here - Irish insulted in major Washington museum exhibit claims scholar
“For example, when we discuss the Munster Plantation (begun in the 1580s) and writers associated with it, we include discussion of the warfare against the earl of Desmond (who, it should be pointed out, identified himself as Old English, not Irish) that preceded the plantation (cf. Case 5). We also present a facsimile of the celebratory bardic account, in Irish, of the destruction of the plantation by the Maguire, in 1598 (cf. Case 6).
“One strongpoint of this exhibit is its extended and careful presentation of Irish-language materials, some of them extremely rare (such as the Book of the O'Byrnes on loan from Harvard), thus giving a clear voice to the Gaelic Irish, many of whom (but not all of whom) suffered from events in the period. (Co-curator Kane is expert in the Irish language and history of the period.)
“The exhibit did not cover the period of the penal laws nor the Famine, and it is a disservice to fault us for ignoring later events. Rather, the exhibit covered a period when there was much opportunity for Irish and English actors on the scene, amid all the turmoil, and it was our desire to bring some of those stories to a wider audience, and thus to enrich our understanding of Ireland in the renaissance.
“To deny the trauma of early-modern Irish-English relations is gross error and one that we have not committed. Professor Owens does your readers, and us, a service by making sure that we don't forget that trauma. But it is also erroneous to overlook the fact that this history was more than a drawn battle between "English" and "Irish" with the latter always the loser.
“To try to tell part of that story -- in conjunction with, not in opposition to, the story of state terror and dispossession-- should not lead to our being compared to Holocaust deniers. The early modern Irish nobility were powerful, capable, and even hopeful men and women who wished to see themselves prosper on an international stage. Witness the painting, by Van Dyck, of the daughter of the O'Brien earl of Thomond, now hanging in the Baltimore Museum of Art and reproduced in our exhibit (and on the cover of our catalog). That few of the Irish nobility did so after Cromwell (a period not covered in depth by our exhibit) does not mean that history prior to Cromwell does not exist. Indeed, we end our exhibit with mention of the harp as a symbol of Irish movements for sovereignty and with (brief) discussion of the savagery of the Cromwellian transplantations.
“We encourage your readers to visit the exhibition, to read the catalog and to judge for themselves. Our interpretation will not be everyone's, but that is the purpose of public engagement: to spark discussion. We are disappointed to be so caricatured.”
Original article here - Irish insulted in major Washington museum exhibit claims scholar
12 Comments
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
Switch to the desktop site to post a comment.lcobryan | Feb 13, 2013, 08:14 PM EST
Wow. I have been a long time supporter/member ($$) of the Smithsonian. I have fond memories, beginning in'78, when my Mom took us down and I was able to walk around Skylab @ the ripe old age of 8. I have seen many wonderful exhibits @ the various galleries there over the years; visiting from NY. The poor judgement and lack of due-dilligence in presenting this exhibit calls into question the integrity of ALL their exhibits. I am disappointed. I will visit DC and if I am unhappy, I will forego any future donations. It is false to claim the integrity of a snippet, as it is but a subset of a whole. While the info should be presented, it should be presented for what it was: a tertiary condition experienced by a few within the context of the whole. It is false to give center stage to a minority condition. It leaves th efalse impression that that was the broader truth, when it was not. Moreover, b/c it implies an idyllic, it demonizes the truth.
merefalow | Feb 13, 2013, 10:15 AM EST
brennan and kane,british spin doctors with a distorted completely false view of history.There was nothing benign about these rapacious theiving murdering invaders.refute this twisted lying so called history for the false propoganda it is.
curtisjohnson | Feb 12, 2013, 10:30 PM EST
“Seeing the pictures. It seems like you could do a similar exhibit about southern plantation owners, dressed in their fancy clothes, describing them as bringing prosperity to the new world. I'll bet that would bring painful criticism. Why is there such a blindspot when it comes to Ireland?” Excellent point, Searlit. Not to mention that the “prosperity” was the result of stolen land and labor (and in Ireland many other sources of wealth based upon the chroniclers of Cromwell’s larceny of cities alone) which was concentrated into the hands of a few thieving squatters.
Searlit | Feb 12, 2013, 07:02 PM EST
Seeing the pictures. It seems like you could do a similar exhibit about southern plantation owners, dressed in their fancy clothes, describing them as bringing prosperity to the new world. I'll bet that would bring painful criticism. Why is there such a blindspot when it comes to Ireland?
WoundedKnee | Feb 12, 2013, 03:23 PM EST
Howe much financial support is the Dublin government giving to this farce? Ireland is broke--even one euro would be one euro wasted.
WoundedKnee | Feb 12, 2013, 03:09 PM EST
This outfit claims that Kane is "an expert" in the Irish language. Well, I've been around Irish language circles in the US for decades, and I've never heard of him. What has he published in Irish or on Irish? He is most definitely not part of the Irish language community here. I do know that he has links with Notre Dame, so I am not surprised he is involved in a project that seeks to demean Irish nationality--that's par for the course at Notre Dame. I commend Professor Owens for taking a stand against these apologists for mass murder and butchery.
padraigocleirigh | Feb 12, 2013, 01:23 PM EST
Mr. O'Dowd, you did Folger Shakespeare Library a solid by fostering controversy about its Irish exhibit. Free publicity. Would you consider advocating for its New York City presentation, perhaps Glucksman Irish House?
cillowen | Feb 12, 2013, 12:54 PM EST
To John, pope-Donald O'Neyl, King of Ulster, together with the inferior kings and chiefs of that territory, and the whole Irish population: - "Most holy father-We here transmit to you some exact and candid particulars concerning the state of our nation and the wrongs which our forefathers have suffered, and we are suffering, from the kings of England, from their agents, and from the English barons born in Ireland. After driving us by violence from our spacious habitations, from our fields, from our paternal inheritances, and compelling us, in order to save our lives to make our abode in the mountains, the marshes, the woods, and the hollows of the rocks, they are now incessantly harrassing us in these miserable retreats, to expel us from them, and appropriate to themselves the whole extent of our country.
seanaci | Feb 12, 2013, 11:36 AM EST
I'm looking forward eagerly to Thomas Herron and Brendan Kane's next projects which I assume are to be "Renaissance Iraq" and "Renaissance Afghanistan" with tasteful pictures of fast food and coffee outlets, CIA drones and black sites and puppet governments
Porickseantuny | Feb 12, 2013, 10:49 AM EST
apparently these historians limit themselves to review of documents. All one has to do in Ireland is go from ruined monastery to ruined monastery in western Ireland, as I have,to observe the stark shells of what one were seats of learning. Much of the destruction is attributed to Henry VIII and his minions. You don't need to read books, just observe the reality.
slainte9 | Feb 12, 2013, 10:12 AM EST
The Ulster Plantation: how can it be characterized as anything but ethnic cleansing and the establishment of a politically, sectarian and ethnically reliable population in Ireland.
slainte9 | Feb 12, 2013, 10:06 AM EST
The Penal Laws were put in place starting in 1607. The Ulster colonization by Scots-English reivers began at the same time. Would someone say that the period after imposition of the Nuremberg Laws was often one of German-Jewish cooperation?