MANCHÁN MAGAN'stales of a travel addict
WE ALL ADMIRE our national arts institutions, so how about going on holidays with them? Most cultural institutions have a “friends” programme that arranges tours abroad. The Irish Georgian Society was famous in its heyday for the Bacchanalia of its trips. Nowadays, as members age, things are more sedate. A recent trip to Andalucía included a visit to the Duchess of Medinaceli’s 15th-century Casa de Pilatos, lunch at the Duke de Segorbe’s Moratalla Palace hotel and a visit to the Palace of the Marques de Arizon – a family of Irish descent, the Harrisons, sherry traders who fled the Penal Laws.
The Georgian Society can rely on its aristocratic connections to gain access through the gilded doors of Europe, and likewise the National Concert Hall uses its relations with Europe’s great music and opera halls to arrange backstage tours and priority seating for its members abroad. The NCH runs a few tours a year, occasionally linking up with friends’ groups allied to the venue they are visiting for interval drinks and to get an insider perspective on the local music scene.
The RDS uses its status as a private members club to visit exclusive clubs on its tours, which are mostly based around an opera and ballet in a great European city. Recent trips brought it to the Lansdowne Club in Mayfair and the St James Club in Paris, and a private viewing of paintings at the Royal Society of Arts.
Members of the Chester Beatty Library tend to seek out behind-the-scenes visits to lesser-known collections guided by head curators. In March, they head to London for a private viewing of manuscripts in Sir John Soane’s Museum, as well as a guided tour of the quaint Petrie Museum in University College London, and a visit to Hajj: Journey to the Heart of Islam at the British Museum.
The Wagner Society of Ireland offers one of the few ways of getting a precious ticket to a Ring Cycle opera at Bayreuth. It distributes the tickets by ballot to the fortunate few, while the rest can drown their sorrows with five nights in Berlin watching Wagner operas, as they did last year. In April, members head to Wurzburg to satiate their operatic appetites with Tristan and Isolde and from there to Nürnberg for more Wagnerian excess.
The equally insatiable members of the Irish Association of Art Historians will descend like a tumult upon the Renaissance frescos of northern Italy this year, gorging on works by Giotto, Titian and Correggio in the small chapels, great churches or palatial complexes for which they were created. For culture vultures in Munster, the Friends of the Crawford Gallery offer similar delights.
If elite access is a priority, then the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland are almost as well-connected as the Georgian society, while the Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland manages to get its members into the finest designer apothecaries of Cap d’Antibes, high-tech nurseries in Holland and Royal paddocks in Cheshire.
Most institutions aim to create short, affordable tours, but those of the National Gallery of Ireland are more thorough, 10-day affairs. 2010 took in Athens, the Peloponnese and south central Greece, while in 2011 it was Moscow and St Petersburg, with an evening at the Irish ambassador’s residence. This year, the tour follows the artists’ route through Provence, with a visit to the papal vineyard at Châteauneuf-du-Pape.
This last aspect, consumption of good wine, is an intrinsic part of any cultural tour. A newly-sober friend has just returned from a British Museum tour and found it a disconcertingly different experience without alcohol. The members may be more cultured than the norm, but they sure know how to party.
Chester Beatty Library, cbl.ie; Royal Dublin Society, rds.ie; National Gallery, nationalgallery.ie; Irish Association of Art Historians, artefactjournal.com; Irish Georgian Society, igs.ie; The Wagner society of Ireland, wagnersociety.ie; Royal Horticultural Society of Ireland, rhsi.ie;