The RHA Friends are invited to experience the Museum of Literature Ireland’s highlights in an exclusive, free guided tour* led by one of MoLI’s expert tour guides. Here, we will enjoy unique insights into the exhibitions in the historic setting of Newman House, the exquisite Georgian building where James Joyce was a student. We will be guided through immersive multimedia exhibitions on the culture and heritage of Irish literature, see priceless artefacts, such as Joyce’s personal ‘Copy No. 1’ of Ulysses, his handwritten notes and William Butler Yeats’ Nobel Prize Medal for Literature as well as experiencing various temporary exhibitions on diverse Irish writers, individual ‘literary cities’ around the world, and different contemporary genres.
We will be given a tour of the current main temporary exhibition, Love Says Bloom, which looks at the deep love between Irish writer James Joyce, his wife Nora Barnacle, and their children Giorgio and Lucia, using music as a steadfast element in their lives. Giorgio trained as a singer, Lucia was an accomplished dancer, and all four Joyces often sang at the piano, with friends, for both celebration and succour.
The Joyces lived in a war-ruptured early twentieth-century Europe – in Pola, Trieste, Zürich, and Paris – and their native Ireland was also up-ended by division. In this exhibition, curator Nuala O’Connor celebrates the Joyce’s mutual devotion, alongside some of the music that bound them, while their world was in flux.
*usual price €11.80, RHA Friends will receive complimentary entry and tour.
Image: MoLI, image courtesy of MoLI.