Art and Kilmainham Gaol: Negotiating Art’s Critical Intervention in the Heritage Site

Abstract

From 1986 to 2006 I was director of Kilmainham Gaol and Museum in Dublin, one of Ireland’s most significant monuments of the modern era. It gained that status through being the place in which most of the leading figures in Ireland’s struggle for independence from British rule between 1796 and 1924 were imprisoned, and some of them executed. The Gaol was in the care of the Office of Public Works (OPW), a department of state, for whom I worked as a professional civil servant. It is now one of Ireland’s most popular heritage sites, attracting up to 300,000 visitors a year.