Yeats &amp; the West

an exhibition of western worlds

presented by NUI Galway

says farewell to

The exhibition turns south once again, en route to its reimagining at Thoor Ballylee.

W.B. Yeats always looked west. Yeats & the West discovers what it meant to him, and what this means for us.

Presented by NUI Galway, Yeats & the West featured at The Model, Sligo, and included an exciting programme of public talks, guided tours, and schools events.

Through crafts, collaborations, and landscapes Yeats & the West continues to try to tell an important story: a story of going west to find out who we really are.

Featuring crafts, collaborations, rare books, music, drama, video, and exclusive artwork, the exhibition turns south once again, en route to its reimagining at Thoor Ballylee.

With special thanks to Emer, Heike, Christian, Marie-Louise, Laura, and all who helped make it such a success. And most especially to our visitors.

Thanks for having us!

Talk at The Model: Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival & the Rising

May 8, 2016May 11, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

Romanticism & Realism:

Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival & the Rising

Public Talk

with

Mary Harris, NUI Galway

6pm Thursday 12 May

The Model Theatre, Sligo

Sponsored by NUI Galway Alumni

Preceded at 5.30pm and followed by exhibition closing wine reception. All welcome!

This talk observes how a cultural revolution became a real revolution. It also examines personalities and politics that more than any others shaped Irish history. Patrick Pearse and Eoin MacNeill were collaborators in the Gaelic League, writers, thinkers and educators working together on An Claidheamh Soluis; fatally, they disagreed over the preparation and timing for armed rebellion. Pearse’s plays drew upon ancient myth to openly demand revolution; MacNeill’s historical studies produced Phases of Irish History and Celtic Ireland. Was it simply romanticism vs realism? Looking back on the Easter Rising and the foundation of the Free State, W.B. Yeats suggested that ‘the modern literature of Ireland, and indeed all that stir of thought which prepared for the Anglo-Irish war, began when Parnell fell from power in 1891. A disillusioned and embittered Ireland turned from parliamentary politics; an event was conceived; and the race began, as I think, to be troubled by that event’s long gestation’. Looking back from one hundred years on, this talk considers the period’s complex interconnections of culture, literature and history, and asks how that ‘stir of thought’ at once created and limited the gestation and flowering of the decisive events of 1916.

Dr Mary Harris is Senior Lecturer in History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. She was born in Cork and is a graduate of UCC, proceeding to Cambridge for her PhD which led to her monograph The Catholic Church and the Foundation of the Northern Irish State (Cork University Press, 1993).

Mary has worked as a secondary school teacher in Cork and Grenada, West Indies. From 1992-6 she taught Irish Studies at the University of North London. Since 1996 she has been in the discipline of History at the National University of Ireland, Galway. Her teaching and research focus is on modern Irish history, and she has published widely in this area. She is currently working on a book on Eoin MacNeill.

Mary is co-ordinator of NUI Galway’s programme commemorating the 1916 Rising and is a member of the Irish government’s expert advisory group on commemoration.

Dr Mary Harris appears in conversation with the curator of Yeats & the West, and Lecturer in English at NUI Galway, Dr Adrian Paterson. The talk is followed by a wine reception for the exhibition closing honouring NUI Galway alumni, who include the illustrious collector Nora Niland.

Donal Tinney Chairperson of The Model, Dr Adrian Paterson NUI Galway and curator of the exhibition and Senator Susan O’Keeffe, at the NUI Galway Launch of Yeats & the West Exhibition at The Model, Sligo.
Photo: James Connolly
24MAR16

Yeats & the West Exhibition Tours & Talks

Curators Tours 1pm. Public Talks 6pm.

Free entry

Tours Thursday at 1pm

Tours of the exhibition from the curators take place every Thursday at 1pm. Find out what makes art and poetry so close, and observe the connection of books, and music, drama, and discover never before seen rare books and fine art from the collections of NUI Galway and The Model. Come and get an inside view of the crafts and cultures that made a western revolution.

Emer McGarry, Acting Director, The Model, Cllr. Thomas Healy, Dr Jim Browne , President of NUI Galway, Martin Enright, President of Yeats Society, Sligo, Dr Adrian Paterson, NUI Galway, and curator of the exhibition, Senator Susan O’Keeffe, Ciaran Hayes, Sligo County Manager, Barry Houlihan, NUIG, Donal Tinney, Chairperson of The Model, and John Cox, NUIG, at the NUI Galway Launch of Yeats & the West Exhibition at The Model, Sligo.
Photo: James Connolly
24MAR16

Talks Thursdays at 6pm

This series of talks on Yeats’s connection to the west and beyond takes us inside the makings of a western cultural revolution. Talks from experts in the field range from exploring the pioneering art and craftwork of the Yeats family to W.B.Yeats’s own life and loves, considering his some of his most controversial and sexy poems; they reveal the extraordinary plays of his brother, the artist Jack B. Yeats, and alongside the Model Gallery’s newly unveiled Broadside collection, showcase his design and print work; and they weigh the wider forces that turned a cultural revolution into a real one.

Speakers include the curators of the exhibition Dr Adrian Paterson and Barry Houlihan (NUI Galway), Professor Adrian Frazier (NUI Galway), Professor Margaret Mills Harper (University of Limerick and outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School), Dr Hilary Pyle (former Yeats Curator at National Gallery of Ireland), Dr Ian Walsh (NUI Galway), Dr Mary Harris (NUI Galway).

All talks take place every Thursday at 6pm in the Model Theatre.

7 April – ‘Lake Isles, River Eyots: making Innisfree with the Yeats family’

Adrian Paterson, English, NUI Galway

14 April – ‘A Disturbing Influence: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats’

Adrian Frazier, English, NUI Galway

21 April – ‘Jack B. Yeats’s A Broadside: a sheaf of ballads or a battery of guns?’

Hilary Pyle, former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland

28 April – ‘W.B. Yeats and the Problem of Crazy Jane’

Margaret Mills Harper, University of Limerick, & outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School

5 May – ‘A Vaudeville of Frustration: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats’.

Ian Walsh, Centre for Drama Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway

12 May – ‘Romanticism and Realism: Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival and the Rising’

Mary Harris, History, NUI Galway

For schools events Thursdays enquire schoolvisits@nuigalway.ie

Tues-Sat: 10am – 5.30pm

Thurs: 10am – 8pm

Sun: 12 – 5pm

Mon: Closed

Talk at The Model: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats

May 3, 2016May 4, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

A Vaudeville of Frustration: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats

Public Talk

with

Dr Ian Walsh, NUI Galway

6pm Thursday 5 May

The Model Theatre, Sligo

Alongside The Model’s Niland collection, and the exhibitions Yeats & the West and A Broadside this talk uncovers the rarely-read and even more rarely-performed plays of Jack B. Yeats, Ireland’s greatest painter. Beginning with children’s miniature theatre productions, voiced and written by the artist and for which he drew and designed stage, set, and characters with piratical cast, Jack B. Yeats always aimed athwart at conventional theatre. He developed an idiosyncratic theatrical voice that was both distinctive, and distinctively modernist, not quite like anything ever seen or heard in or out of the theatre. Despite Jack Yeats’s earlier close association with J.M.Synge, plays that were not accepted by his brother’s Abbey Theatre found a further life alongside his brother’s at Mary O’Malley’s Lyric Theatre Belfast. From Harlequin’s Positions and In Sand to The Green Wave and La La Noo, Jack Yeats’s drama engages directly with his artistic practice, often referencing his paintings and broadsides, and directly influenced Beckett’s absurdist dramaturgy.

Ian Walsh is Lecturer in Drama, Theatre, and Performance at NUI Galway. His monograph Experimental Irish Theatre After W.B Yeats was published in 2012 by Palgrave Macmillan. In 2015 his collection The Theatre of Enda Walsh co-edited with Mary Caulfield was released, the first critical collection on the plays and films of Enda Walsh. He has published widely on Irish theatre and has given invited talks across Ireland, Germany and the United States. Ian is also preparing a monograph on Popular Irish Theatre. Professional directing credits include Purple Path to the Poppy Field ( Hora Prima, 2006) and The Magic Flute (2011), Orfeo Ed Eurydice (2010), Riders to the Sea and The Wandering Scholar (2009) all for DLR Glasthule Opera.

Ian Walsh appears in conversation with the curator of Yeats & the West, and Archivist in the James Hardiman Library at NUI Galway, Barry Houlihan.

Dr Adrian Paterson, NUI Galway, and curator of the exhibition, Donal Tinney, Chairperson of The Model, John Cox, NUIG, and Barry Houlihan, NUIG, at the NUI Galway Launch of Yeats & the West Exhibition at The Model, Sligo.
Photo: James Connolly
24MAR16

Yeats & the West Exhibition Tours & Talks

Curators Tours 1pm. Public Talks 6pm.

Free entry

Tours Thursday at 1pm

Talks Thursdays at 6pm

All talks take place every Thursday at 6pm in the Model Theatre.

7 April – ‘Lake Isles, River Eyots: making Innisfree with the Yeats family’

Adrian Paterson, English, NUI Galway

14 April – ‘A Disturbing Influence: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats’

Adrian Frazier, English, NUI Galway

21 April – ‘Jack B. Yeats’s A Broadside: a sheaf of ballads or a battery of guns?’

Hilary Pyle, former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland

28 April – ‘W.B. Yeats and the Problem of Crazy Jane’

Margaret Mills Harper, University of Limerick, & outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School

5 May – ‘A Vaudeville of Frustration: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats’.

Ian Walsh, Centre for Drama Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway

12 May – ‘Romanticism and Realism: Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival and the Rising’

Mary Harris, History, NUI Galway

For schools events Thursdays enquire schoolvisits@nuigalway.ie

Tues-Sat: 10am – 5.30pm

Thurs: 10am – 8pm

Sun: 12 – 5pm

Mon: Closed

Yeats & the Problem of Crazy Jane

April 25, 2016May 3, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

Yeats & the Problem of Crazy Jane

Public Talk

with

Professor Margaret Mills Harper

6pm Thursday 28 April

The Model Theatre, Sligo

Fergus Bourke: Hawthorn Tree, Connemara

This talk considers Yeats’s late 1930s flowering in poetry that is randy, raucous, rampaging, but possessing also a rare subtlety and rhythmic feeling. The talk opens up discussion of poetics, censorship, balladry, sexuality, the fascinating western figures of Cracked Mary and Crazy Jane, what you can get up to beneath trees, and even a type of herbal substance named ‘Warlock’. Professor Harper’s scholarship is both engaging and profound, and this is a talk not to be missed.

Margaret Mills Harper is Glucksman Professor of Contemporary Writing in English at the University of Limerick. She is the author of The Aristocracy of Art: Joyce and Wolfe (1990), and Wisdom of Two: The Spiritual and Literary Collaboration of George and W. B. Yeats ( 2006). She has co-edited two of the four volumes of Yeats’s “Vision” Papers (1992 and 2001) and both the 1925 and 1937 versions of Yeats’s A Vision (2008, 2015).

Crazy Jane and the Bishop

Bring me to the blasted oak
That I, midnight upon the stroke,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
May call down curses on his head
Because of my dear Jack that’s dead.
Coxcomb was the least he said:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

Nor was he Bishop when his ban
Banished Jack the Journeyman,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor so much as parish priest,
Yet he, an old book in his fist,
Cried that we lived like beast and beast:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

The Bishop has a skin, God knows,
Wrinkled like the foot of a goose,
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Nor can he hide in holy black
The heron’s hunch upon his back,
But a birch-tree stood my Jack:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

Jack had my virginity,
And bids me to the oak, for he
(All find safety in the tomb.)
Wanders out into the night
And there is shelter under it,
But should that other come, I spit:
The solid man and the coxcomb.

from Words for Music Perhaps (1931)

Professor Margaret Mills Harper appears in conversation with the curator of Yeats & the West, and Lecturer in English at NUI Galway, Dr Adrian Paterson.

Dr Adrian Paterson – NUI Galway and curator of the exhibition, speaking at the NUI Galway Launch of Yeats & the West Exhibition at The Model, Sligo.
Photo: James Connolly
24MAR16

Yeats & the West Exhibition Tours & Talks

Curators Tours 1pm. Public Talks 6pm.

Free entry

Tours Thursday at 1pm

Talks Thursdays at 6pm

All talks take place every Thursday at 6pm in the Model Theatre.

7 April – ‘Lake Isles, River Eyots: making Innisfree with the Yeats family’

Adrian Paterson, English, NUI Galway

14 April – ‘A Disturbing Influence: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats’

Adrian Frazier, English, NUI Galway

21 April – ‘Jack B. Yeats’s A Broadside: a sheaf of ballads or a battery of guns?’

Hilary Pyle, former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland

28 April – ‘W.B. Yeats and the Problem of Crazy Jane’

Margaret Mills Harper, University of Limerick, & outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School

5 May – ‘A Vaudeville of Frustration: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats’.

Ian Walsh, Centre for Drama Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway

12 May – ‘Romanticism and Realism: Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival and the Rising’

Mary Harris, History, NUI Galway

For schools events Thursdays enquire schoolvisits@nuigalway.ie

Tues-Sat: 10am – 5.30pm

Thurs: 10am – 8pm

Sun: 12 – 5pm

Mon: Closed

Talk at Yeats & the West: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats

April 8, 2016April 12, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

A Disturbing Influence: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats

Public Talk

Adrian Frazier, NUI Galway

6pm Thursday 14 April

The Model Theatre, Sligo

Free entry

This talk is an incendiary look at an incendiary relationship: that of Maud Gonne and W.B. Yeats. Using never before unearthed material it takes us inside a troubled and troubling connection made from politics, personality, poetry, magic, deceit, and love.

A native of St Louis, Missouri, Professor Adrian Frazier (NUI Galway) pursued his fascination with Irish literature and theatre to Ireland’s west, and now lives in Galway. He is the author of Behind the Scenes: Yeats, Horniman, and the Struggle for the Abbey Theatre (Berkeley: University of California 1990), an acclaimed biography of the cultural milieu of Irish novelist and memoirist George Moore, George Moore, 1852-1933 (New Haven: Yale UP 2000), and Hollywood Irish: John Ford, Abbey Actors, and the Irish Revival in Hollywoood (Dublin: Lilliput Press 2011). His most recent book is an illustrated pen portrait of the life and work of sculptor John Behan entitled John Behan: The Bull from Sherriff Street (Dublin: Lilliput Press, 2015). His next book is The Adulterous Muse: Maud Gonne, W.B. Yeats and Lucien Millevoye, a joint biography of Yeats, Gonne, and her lover Millevoye French political activist and father of her children, recasting completely our view of the personalities and politics of this tangled and incendiary love triangle.

Adrian Frazier: ‘Galway has a great reputation for creativity globally. Theatre people stay here, actors stay here, it’s easy to put on plays; bookshops are very active in hosting readings.’ PHOTO: JOE O’SHAUGHNESSY.

He appears in conversation with curator of the Yeats & the West exhibition Dr Adrian Paterson.

Yeats & the West Exhibition Tours & Talks

Curators Tours 1pm. Public Talks 6pm.

Free entry

Tours Thursday at 1pm

Talks Thursdays at 6pm

All talks take place every Thursday at 6pm in the Model Theatre.

7 April – ‘Lake Isles, River Eyots: making Innisfree with the Yeats family’

Adrian Paterson, English, NUI Galway

14 April – ‘A Disturbing Influence: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats’

Adrian Frazier, English, NUI Galway

21 April – ‘Jack B. Yeats’s A Broadside: a sheaf of ballads or a battery of guns?’

Hilary Pyle, former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland

28 April – ‘W.B. Yeats and the Problem of Crazy Jane’

Margaret Mills Harper, University of Limerick, & outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School

5 May – ‘A Vaudeville of Frustration: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats’.

Ian Walsh, Centre for Drama Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway

12 May – ‘Romanticism and Realism: Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival and the Rising’

Mary Harris, History, NUI Galway

For schools events Thursdays enquire schoolvisits@nuigalway.ie

Tues – Sat: 10am – 5.30pm

Thurs: 10am – 8pm

Sun: 12 – 5pm

Mon: Closed

Talk at Yeats & the West: Lake Isles, River Eyots

April 6, 2016April 11, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

Lake Isles, River Eyots: Making Innisfree with the Yeats Family
Public Talk

Adrian Paterson, NUI Galway

6pm Thursday 7 April

The Model Theatre, Sligo

This talk looks at Yeats’s most famous poem and asks where it comes from, and where it goes to. It examines the new kinds of crafts and making from the Yeats family, in west London as well as the west of Ireland.

Curator of the exhibition Yeats & the West, Dr Adrian Paterson is a Lecturer in English at NUI Galway. He appears in conversation with the co-curator Barry Houlihan.

Dr Adrian Paterson – NUI Galway and curator of the exhibition, speaking at the NUI Galway Launch of Yeats & the West Exhibition at The Model, Sligo.
Photo: James Connolly
24MAR16

Yeats & the West Exhibition Tours & Talks

Curators Tours 1pm. Public Talks 6pm.

Free entry

Tours Thursday at 1pm

Talks Thursdays at 6pm

All talks take place every Thursday at 6pm in the Model Theatre.

7 April – ‘Lake Isles, River Eyots: making Innisfree with the Yeats family’

Adrian Paterson, English, NUI Galway

14 April – ‘A Disturbing Influence: Maud Gonne in the life of W.B. Yeats’

Adrian Frazier, English, NUI Galway

21 April – ‘Jack B. Yeats’s A Broadside: a sheaf of ballads or a battery of guns?’

Hilary Pyle, former Yeats Curator at the National Gallery of Ireland

28 April – ‘W.B. Yeats and the Problem of Crazy Jane’

Margaret Mills Harper, University of Limerick, & outgoing Director of the Yeats International Summer School

5 May – ‘A Vaudeville of Frustration: The Theatre of Jack B. Yeats’.

Ian Walsh, Centre for Drama Theatre and Performance, NUI Galway

12 May – ‘Romanticism and Realism: Pearse, MacNeill, the Revival and the Rising’

Mary Harris, History, NUI Galway

For schools events Thursdays enquire schoolvisits@nuigalway.ie

Tues – Sat: 10am – 5.30pm

Thurs: 10am – 8pm

Sun: 12 – 5pm

Mon: Closed

Yeats & the West opens at The Model, Sligo

March 19, 2016March 18, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

an exhibition of western worlds

featuring crafts, collaborations, rare books, music, drama, video, and exclusive art

presented by NUI Galway

Exhibition Opening

6pm Thursday 24 March

The Model, Sligo

W.B. Yeats always looked west. Yeats & the West discovers what it meant to him, and what this means for us.

Yeats & the West opens at the Model, Sligo, featuring an exciting programme of public talks, guided tours, and schools events.

24 March to 12 May 2016 The Model, Sligo

Curators Tours Thursdays at 1pm. Public Talks Thursdays at 6pm

Open: Tue-Sat 10am-5.30pm

Thurs: 10am-8pm

Fri: 12am-5pm

Mon: Closed

Through crafts, collaborations, and landscapes Yeats & the West tells the story of going west to find out who we really are.

This exhibition comes to the Model from NUI Galway, and explores Yeats’s life, work, and legacy through his connections to the west. Rare artworks, books, manuscripts, and exclusive images, photographs, and film feature in an exhibition that reveals the impact of western heritage on W.B. Yeats and the wider Yeats family. Their commitment to crafts and culture created a western revolution that shaped modern Ireland.

“Yeats always looked west. For him the west of Ireland was the wellspring of songs, stories, and folklore, the foundation of the Irish imagination. It was the landscape of his poetry and plays. Significant events of his life took place here; collaborations that formed his work were forged here. This western outlook even took him and the Abbey Theatre players as far as the American west. Yeats & the West tells this remarkable story and considers what the west meant to him, and what that means for us”, explains Dr Adrian Paterson, a Lecturer in English at NUI Galway and scholar of W.B. Yeats, who led the curation of the exhibition.

Presented in association with NUI Galway, Yeats & the West features research input from the university’s Moore Institute for the Humanities, exclusive materials from the James Hardiman Library, from the National Library of Ireland, and from the Model’s own collections. The exhibition represents NUI Galway’s continuing contribution to the Decade of Commemorations and to Yeats2015, the worldwide series of cultural events marking the poet’s 150^th birthday.

Yeats & the West comes to Sligo

March 16, 2016March 18, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

an exhibition of western worlds

featuring crafts, collaborations, rare books, music, drama, video, and exclusive artwork

presented by NUI Galway

comes to

W.B. Yeats always looked west. Yeats & the West discovers what it meant to him, and what this means for us.

Presented by NUI Galway, Yeats & the West comes to the Model, Sligo, featuring an exciting programme of public talks, guided tours, and schools events.

24 March to 12 May 2016 The Model, Sligo

Curators Tours Thursdays at 1pm. Public Talks Thursdays at 6pm

Open: Tue-Sat 10am-5.30pm

Thurs: 10am-8pm

Fri: 12am-5pm

Mon: Closed

Through crafts, collaborations, and landscapes Yeats & the West tells the story of going west to find out who we really are.

This special exhibition for his 150th birthday runs 24 March to 12 May in the Model.

Take in the crafts and symbols that started the Irish Revival.

Learn more about the figures whose art and ideas shaped modern Ireland.

J.M.Synge at The Playboy of the Western World dress rehearsal, by John Butler Yeats

Through drama, film, rare books, manuscripts, artwork, crafts, and music, feel what it must have been like to a be a part of this cultural revolution.

Remembering this revolutionary year come and discover the collaborations that led to a real revolution.

Come and see how far west this revolution spread – even as far as Hollywood!

At the Model, Sligo, until 12 May 2016.

24 March to 12 May 2016

Open: Tue-Sat 10am-5.30pm

Thurs: 10am-8pm

Fri: 12am-5pm

Mon: Closed

Curators Tours Thursdays at 1pm. Public Talks Thursdays at 6pm

Yeats & the West extended opening

February 8, 2016February 7, 2016 / thebicyclops / Leave a comment

an exhibition of western worlds

featuring crafts, collaborations, rare books, music, drama, video, and exclusive artwork

Hardiman Research Building, NUI Galway

now with extended opening

until Friday February 19th