National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street

About

The National Museum of Ireland, Kildare Street (Irish: Ard-Mhúsaem na hÉireann – Seandálaíocht") is a branch of the National Museum of Ireland located on Kildare Street in Dublin, Ireland, that specialises in Irish and other antiquities dating from the Stone Age to the Late Middle Ages.

The museum was established under the Dublin Science and Art Museum Act 1877 (40 & 41 Vict. c. ccxxxiv). Before, its collections had been divided between the Royal Dublin Society and the Natural History Museum on Merrion Street. The museum was built by the father and son architects Thomas Newenham Deane and Thomas Manly Deane. The rotunda at the front of the National Museum matches that of the National Library of Ireland, which face each other across the front of Leinster House. The National Museum of Ireland's collection contains artifacts from prehistoric Ireland including bog bodies, Iron and Bronze Age objects such as axe heads, swords and shields in bronze, silver and gold, with the earliest dated to c. 7000 BC. It holds the world's most substantial collection of post-Roman era Irish medieval art (known as Insular art). In addition, it houses a substantial collection of medieval metalwork, Viking...

The impetus for creating the museum was the 1877 Dublin Science and Art Museum Act, which combined the collections of the Royal Irish Academy (RIA) and Royal Dublin Society (RDS). This new law was enacted because the RIA recognised it needed government funding to continue its acquisition program and because becoming a state body allowed easier collaboration with the British Museum and National Museum of Scotland. The project was overseen by the palaeontologist Alexander Carte.

Among other early sources for the museum’s collection were works held by Trinity College Dublin and the Geological Survey of Ireland. These included such major pieces as the Cross of Cong (which the RIA acquired from an Augustinian priory in County Mayo ) and the Domnach Airgid (acquired in 1847). In the mid-nineteenth century, the museum also acquired the collections of academy members such as Henry Sirr and Petrie (who left some 1500 artifacts, including 900 from pre-history, six crosiers, and a number of bells and bell shrines).

Many of these pieces had been found in the 19th century by agricultural labourers when population expansion and new machinery led to the cultivation of land that had not been touched since the Middle Ages. George Petrie of the RIA and others who were members of the Royal Society of Antiquaries of Ireland intervened to prevent these metalwork artifacts from being melted down and repurposed as mere metal. Discovery of such objects continues to the present day; recent major discoveries include the 8th century Tully Lough Cross, found in 1986, and the Clonycavan bog bodies, found in 2003.

In 1908, the museum was renamed the National Museum of Science and Art, and in 1921, following Irish independence, it was renamed the National Museum of Ireland.

The original museum was titled the Dublin Museum of Science and Art, and located between the Royal Dublin Society in Leinster House and the Natural History Museum in Merrion Street. The museum's storage and display requirements became too large for these locations, and a new museum was built on Kildare Street. Opened on 29 August 1890, it was designed by Thomas Newenham Deane and his son, Thomas Manly Deane, in the Victorian Palladian style. The columns around the entrance and the domed rotunda are made from Irish marble and bear influence from both 18th century neoclassical design and the Pantheon in Rome. The stone on the exterior is mostly Leinster granite, with the columns formed from sandstone excavated at Mountcharles, County Donegal.

The mosaic floors in the interior contain scenes from classical mythology. Although laid out in the 19th century by the Manchaster-based artist Ludwig Oppenheimer, they were covered for decades until cleaned and restored in 2011. The wooden doors were carved by either William Milligan of Dublin or Carlo Cambi of Siena, Italy, while the fireplaces contain majolica tiles by the UK-based Burmantofts Pottery. The balcony of the central court is held by rows of thin cast-iron columns containing ornate capitals decorated with groups of cherubs.

Columns and domed rotunda at the entrance

Stairway between the museum's two floors

View from the centre court overlooking the goldwork exhibition hall

The NMI has a number of large permanent exhibits, mainly of Irish historical objects and also a few smaller exhibits on the ancient Mediterranean, including galleries on Ancient Egypt, as well as "Ceramics and Glass from Ancient Cyprus".

The museum's prehistoric Ireland exhibit contains artefacts from the earliest period of human habitation in Ireland (just after the Last Glacial Period ) up to the Celtic Iron Age. The collection includes numerous stone implements created by the first hunter-gatherer colonists from around 7000 BC, as well as tools, pottery and burial objects left by Neolithic farmers. Some notable artefacts include four rare Jadeite axeheads imported from the Alps of Neolithic Italy, and the unique ceremonial macehead discovered at the tomb of Knowth. The exhibit then covers the introduction of metallurgy into Ireland around 2500 BC, with early copper implements.

The museum has a large array of later Bronze Age period axes, daggers, swords, shields, cauldrons and cast bronze horns (the earliest known Irish musical instruments). There are a few very early Iron weapons. Wooden objects include a large dugout logboat, wooden wheels and cauldrons and ancient reed fishing equipment.

The Corleck Head, a 1st or 2nd century AD three-faced stone head found in Drumeague, County Cavan, Ireland c. 1855.

Votive offering in metal with relief of boys on horseback, Newgrange, County Meath, 2nd-4th century AD

The NMI's collection of Bronze Age goldwork ranges from c. 2200 to 1800 B.C and is considered one of the "largest and most important" in Western Europe. The gold was recovered from river gravel and hammered into thin sheets used to create objects such as crescent-shaped collars ( Gold lunula ), bracelets and dress-fasteners. Most of the goldwork is probably jewellery, but many of the objects of are of unknown (possibly ritual) function.

By the middle Bronze Age new goldwork techniques were developed; from around 1200 BC a great variety of torcs were produced from twisting bars of gold. Items from the late Bronze Age (that is from c. 900 BC) include solid gold bracelets, dress-fasteners, large sheet gold collars, ear-spools and a necklace of hollow golden balls.

Decorated stone from Loughcrew, Co Meath, 2500-1700 BC

Gold lunula, Coggalbeg hoard, 2200-1800 BC