MUSEUM IRELAND 2020
Review: Exhibitions
the centenary of Tomás MacCurtáin’s death on Suffering the Most
20th of that month. When full lockdown was
Cork Public Museum
announced on March 29, it became clear that Cork
21 September 2020 – 20 December 2021
City’s year of remembering would be severely curtailed.
Danielle O’Donovan Cork Public Museum’s Suffering the Most: The As you drive into Cork City from the east, along
life and times of Tomás MacCurtáin and Terence
the dual carriageway at Tivoli, two giant banners
MacSwiney was launched in September 2020 but
portray the two lost Lord mayors of Cork, Tomás
has only managed to be open to the public for
MacCurtáin and Terence MacSwiney, accompanied
nine weeks at the time of writing. The exhibition
by the slogan ‘A City Remembers’. MacCurtáin,
was a collaboration between museum staff and
Lord Mayor of Cork, was shot in March 1920
Dandelion Design, with well-known local historian
as violence in the city escalated. By October,
Gerry White, who researched and wrote the
MacSwiney, as his replacement, was dying on
information panels. His knowledge of the period
hunger strike in a British prison. In December,
is encyclopedic, and he has distilled it into a
when crown forces set fire to St Patrick’s Street,
compelling text.
hostilities reached a fever pitch. An excerpt MacSwiney’s first speech as Lord Mayor One hundred years on, in 2020, Cork was to have
of Cork forms the gateway to the exhibition:
taken a leading role in the Decade of Centenaries. Exhibitions and events had been planned to fill
This contest of ours is not on our side a rivalry of
the cultural spaces of the city, and to spill onto the
vengeance, but one of endurance - it is not they who
streets in the form of state commemorations. The
can inflict most but who can suffer the most will
appearance on 17 February 2020 of the first case
conquer - though we do not abrogate our function
of COVID-19 in Ireland and the announcement of
to demand and see that evil doers and murderers are
restrictive measures on 12 March overshadowed
punished for their crimes.
Entering Suffering the Most we are greeted by individual portraits of MacCurtáin and MacSwiney on the left, and the men pictured together on the right. Credit: Cork Public Museum
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