Message from the Chair Dr Audrey Whitty

MUSEUM IRELAND 2020 Message from the Chair, Dr Audrey Whitty

The year 2020 has been one of the most eventful in recent contemporary history, and its legacy for museums throughout Ireland will continue to unfold for at least the next decade.

It has been a time when museums have underlined one particular characteristic by way of describing the way in which the sector has handled such a crisis: flexibility.

This characteristic of flexibility and adaptation has been most notable by way of programming, engagement across a range of online and onsite platforms, a renewed emphasis on our own holdings, i.e., the collection, and the ability of our tangible and intangible culture to connect through the humanity of the stories behind its actual creation and acquisition.

This latter point also led to a much-needed urgent impetus on the question of repatriation and the rights of justice throughout the sector, both through the collections we hold in trust on behalf of all, and also by way of what our staffing and governance says about contemporary Ireland.

Museums across the planet have never been more relevant nor more central to our future as a species.

Audrey Whitty is Chair of the Irish Museums Association and Head of Collections and Learning of the National Museum of Ireland.