A Lecture by Dan Breen, Courator of Cork Public Museum.
Mr Breen gave a highly engaging lecture about how and why museums can be selective when deciding what to exhibit. Mr Breen explained how Cork Public Museum (CPM) has previously been reluctant to explore aspects of the past due to fear of backlash and public opinion. The time period the museum was reluctant to exhibit was that of 1913 – 1923, Revolutionary Ireland. It was only through the Decade of Centenaries Programme that CPM explored this time period in detail. Before Mr Breen delved into the topic of the lecture, he gave some overall information about the museum.
Mr Breen emphasised the importance of cataloguing and storing the artifacts and documents properly, and how without appropriate organisation the museum can not function as it should. CPM is the oldest local authority museum in Ireland and covers 7,000 years of human history of Cork. In recent years the museum has begun the process of digitization and has created a new website. The museum was first founded in 1945 after a 1942 exhibition portrayed Irish political history. The public decided that they wanted a museum that would tell a well-rounded history. That being said, the museum was quite censored in what it was exhibiting in its early development.
When the museum originally opened the workers steered away from three specific areas of history, the role of women, the Great War and the Irish Civil War. This was primarily due to outside pressures of presenting the ‘right side’ of history. Generally speaking, there was more representation of the anti-treaty part of the divide, thus leading the museum to leave out certain aspects of history. For example, when the museum put on its first 1916 exhibition, there were still members of the rebellion living in Cork at the time, this put a significant amount of pressure on the museum to represent the ‘right’ history. Throughout the museum’s early years, there was a significant underrepresentation of these particular periods.
Due to this underrepresentation, Mr Breen placed emphasis on his philosophy that museums are a politically neutral space, and have a duty to represent as fully rounded version of history as possible. In 2005, Breen put on his first exhibition of the Irish Civil War, he described it as a small exhibition, demonstrating with a picture that it only took up a small glass case in the museum. This was a step in the right direction for the museum, a step towards representing all sides of Irish history, if only on a Cork level. Mr Breen also wanted to place more emphasis on the female role in history, especially in showcasing the role of Cumman na mBán. The role of women in the republican movement was generally underrepresented in CPM at this time. It was during the Decade of Centenaries Programme that the museum began to explore previously underrepresented periods of Irish history. In 2014 the museum put on its first-ever World War 1 exhibition with a lifelike trench built into part of the museum. What was originally astounding was the lack of backlash that occurred when this and other exhibitions like it were put one. Mr Breen stated that there were one or two negative comments made about the exhibitions but overall public feedback was very positive.
This positive reception has allowed more people to come forward with artifacts and documents of historical importance. Families of historic figures have decided that, due to the respect and positivity surrounding the reception of the exhibitions, it was time for them to bring these artifacts to the museum. This really emphasised to me the importance of neutrality and respect which is part of the duty of a historian and curator. Without this neutrality, we wouldn’t have various important documents showing how history all connects together.
Overall this seminar really sparked my interest and forced me to think about the history we are seeing when we visit museums. Are we looking at someone’s agenda? Are we seeing a neutral and unbiased view of history? What does this exhibit want me to learn? I think these are all important questions that we should be asking ourselves when we visit museums.