OnTheTown: There was great excitement at the unveiling of programme plans for the coming year at the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma), which is celebrating its 15th year.
Campbell Bruce, president of the Contemporary Irish Art Society, said he's especially looking forward to seeing the Howard Hodgkin retrospective at Imma, which is opening in late February. "The way he uses colour in portraiture is exciting," said Bruce, who was accompanied by his wife, artist Jacqueline Stanley.
"Hodgkin is a big name on the European scene," added Brian Ranalow, an Imma board member and an artist who will have a solo show at the Garter Lane Arts Centre in Waterford in March. According to Ranalow, attendance numbers at Imma are up 20 per cent because the museum's director, Enrique Juncosa, "is pulling in these big shows. It's very impressive because he's plugged into the networks of the big galleries around the world. He's a great asset."
Frank X Buckley, another Imma board member, said Hodgkin "has a sense of joy in his paintings". Buckley is in Galway this weekend for the opening of African Vision - Collected Works from Central and West Africa, curated by Brian Bourke and on view at the Galway Arts Centre.
"It is heartening to see this constant development in the museum's programmes and the growing public engagement with its work," said John O'Donoghue, the Minister for Arts, launching the programme.
Áine O'Driscoll, another Imma board member whose gallery, The Old Oratory in Cahirciveen, Co Kerry, will be reopening in its original home in May, was also there along with fellow board members Rosemary Ashe and Chris Flynn. The first showing in Ireland of work by acclaimed Roscommon-born artist James Coleman, at Imma, "will make people sit up and turn up in big numbers", said Flynn.
Others at the lunchtime reception included Hugh Maguire, of the Heritage Council; photographer John Minihan; Hilary Pyle, author of Cesca's Diary; Stephanie McBride, chair of the board of the Gallery of Photography; and artist Karl Grimes. Grimes has been on a fellowship at the Mütter Museum in Philadelphia, and he will have a show there later in the year, based on the museum's famous medical archive. The show, which is called Vial Memory, will also be opening in Dublin's Gallery of Photography.
Amore, Mozart
The young soloists backstage at the National Concert Hall were all ready to play Mozart as the year's anniversary celebrations marking the composer's 250th birthday got underway in Dublin on Thursday night. Adam McDonagh (12) from Stillorgan, Co Dublin, performed the second movement of Mozart's Piano Concerto No 21. His parents, Deirdre and Peter, and his brother David (18) were in the audience.
Clarinet soloist Sebastian O'Shea Farren (13) played the second movement of Mozart's Clarinet Concert. The music "is slightly nostalgic," said the young musician before he walked out in front of the audience, which included his grandparents, Sonny Farren from Rush, Co Dublin and Kay O'Shea from Limerick.
"Amore, mi faccia vi vendo penar (Beloved, may fate take revenge on my heart)," sang soprano Mairéad Buicke and mezzo-soprano Norah King, in a duet from Cosi fan Tutte. They followed violin soloist Stephanie McCabe, who played the first movement of Violin Concerto No 3. The special concert from the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland Camerata, under the direction of Michael d'Arcy, opened with Mozart's first symphony, which he wrote when he was eight years old.
According to piano soloist, Finghin Collins, who played at Thursday's concert and who plays more Mozart tonight in Belfast's Ulster Hall with the Ulster Orchestra, the composer "communicates directly to the human spirit. There's not a note that is not inspired".
How to sell Kinsale
Aggie Carty mysteriously wove her way through the room in a hooded black cloak. The business community, which had travelled to Dublin's La Stampa Hotel on Wednesday night to launch Kinsale 2006, didn't even bat an eyelid.
She could have been the French Lieutenant's Woman but Cllr Charles Henderson, chair of the Kinsale Harbour Commissioners, immediately recognised his sister hidden under the traditional Kinsale cloak, which belonged to their grandmother, Catherine Gunney.
"The harbour is the jewel in the crown of Kinsale," he said as Dubliner Stephen McLoughlin passed by, dressed as an admiral of the fleet in order to highlight the town's great yachting and sailing attractions.
"If you haven't been there, then you have to come," said hotelier Jack Walsh, general manager of Acton's Hotel, and chair of the Kinsale Chamber of Tourism.
Tomás O'Brien, mayor of Kinsale and tournament director of the Heineken Kinsale Sevens, said the May Bank Holiday event attracted 84 rugby teams from 11 countries last year. It is now going into its 18th year. Simon Norton, from Timoleague, Co Cork, wore his rugby gear in order to mark the occasion.
Among other highlights this year, the town celebrates its 30th Gourmet Festival in October. Also at the launch were Gerry Wycherley, chair of Kinsale Races, Ciaran Fitzgerald of the Blue Haven Hotel, Hal McElroy of the Trident Hotel, Michael Blake of the White Lady Hotel, Paul O'Shea of the White House Inn and Colette Nolan with her daughter, Laura McKeown (17), of the newly-opened Vista cafe and tapas bar.
Celtic connections
Thoughts turned to the visit of artist Joseph Beuys to Ireland in the 1970s, at the opening of a photographic exhibition in the Goethe-Institut in Dublin last Monday. "He was so funny and warm and interested in everything," recalled Prof Caroline Tisdall, who photographed Beuys during his visit to "the Celtic World". He travelled to Newgrange, the Giant's Causeway, Belfast, Derry, Coleraine and the Martello tower in Sandycove among other places.
"People who are not artists understand him rather than those in the art world," said Tisdall. " People loved him because he believed everyone is an artist." Ursula Matussek, a German painter, recalled Beuys in the 1970s as "very impressive".
As well as the Beuys and the Celtic World photographic exhibition, a symposium on his legacy was also organised to mark the 20th anniversary of his death.
Victoria Walters, a PhD student at University of Ulster, Magee, in Derry, has made Beuys the subject of her thesis. Although she never met Beuys, she got a sense he was a "very loving and spiritual person".
Artist and head of fine art at the National College of Art and Design, Brian Maguire, recalled Beuys giving a lecture in the Hugh Lane gallery in 1974. "The work I did in prison was very influenced by him," said Maguire who has worked with prisoners over many years.
"He was an amazing man, oozing charisma," recalled Belfast-based Rainer Pagel. Beuys was a controversial figure during his life but "the day he died the media switched over to a kind of benevolent tone acknowledging the greatness of this artist", recalled Matthias Müller-Wieferig, director of the Dublin Goethe-Institut.
A photograph showing Beuys handling agricultural instruments at Kilmainham Hospital in Dublin is one of Tisdall's favourite images from the show "because that's what he came from in Cleves. He had this affinity [with that world]". she said.
Beuys and the Celtic World is at the Goethe-Institut, 37 Merrion Square,
Dublin 2, until Mar 18