The Irish Arts Center in New York has announced plans for a new premises which is likely to make it the main centre for Irish culture in the US.

Although the centre has hosted everyone from actor Liam Neeson to Riverdance composer Bill Whelan, poet Paul Durcan and political commentator David McWilliams, it has done so from a premises that is, frankly, dingy.

Housed in a former tenement building, two blocks in from the West Side Highway on the periphery of Manhattan, the Irish Arts Center has, since 1972, been limited to one auditorium seating fewer than 100 people.

It has had to take its events to bigger venues, whether celebrating Bloomsday in the 800- seat Symphony Space uptown or when last November, it had Gabriel Byrne lead a sold-out poetry tribute to Seamus Heaney, in Brooklyn.

Under a $54 million development plan announced on St Patrick’s Day, the centre will, in two years, have a theatre twice the current size, another intimate café/music venue about the size of its existing auditorium and studio space for rehearsals and for some of the many classes it provides.

Taoiseach Enda Kenny and novelist Colum McCann, who has participated in many readings there, attended the announcement of design plans for the highly anticipated venue last night.

Loretta Brennan Glucksman, a prominent Irish-American philanthropist, said: “This new building may be the most important thing to happen in Irish America in the last 50 years.” Ms Brennan Glucksman is benefactor of Glucksman Ireland House for Irish cultural studies at New York University.

Neeson accepted an award on behalf of the centre last Friday, for promoting “Brand Ireland” by an Irish business gathering, Ireland Inc, at the New York Stock Exchange.

Observers say it is the breadth of scope that distinguishes the centre from other Irish theatres in the US, including the highly regarded Irish Repertory Theatre in Manhattan. Being in New York also distinguishes it from others, such as the Irish American Institute of Chicago.

Executive director Aidan Connolly said: “A multi-disciplinary centre for the Irish arts in New York is by definition important. We have 8.5 million voracious cultural consumers in the city.”

The centre expects to double its annual audience to about 120,000 a year, when it opens its vastly bigger building, still in the same location.

Add to that, Mr Connolly said, those around the US and the world who tuned in to video relays, web seminars and online classes that the new, high-tech centre would offer.

Fewer than 20 per cent of those who attend plays there were Irish, he added. "The best way to preserve the culture is to share it," he said.
Orla O'Sullivan is theatre critic of the Irish Echo , a weekly national newspaper in the US.