Paul O’Neill has recently donated his curatorial archive to the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA) in Dublin, which would also be part of the new collection presentation to be opened in March. Paul and the museum invited me to do an in conversation in February to celebrate the occasion, during which we would also launch Curious and Not Going It Alone. As I’d not been to Dublin in a long time, I jumped at the opportunity. The idea was that Paul would do a short introduction of what the archive contained and he left it to me to shape to conversation that he and I would subsequently have.
As we’d been revisiting his writing for several recent publications, it dawned at me that one way of approaching it would be for me to select a series of quotes as prompts that would allow us to explore how curatorial discourse has changed over time, and in certain respects stayed the same – two parallel observations we’d also discussed in recent verbal and written exchanges.
Of course we also ran out of time on the night, but had a good go at exploring twenty years of written output nonetheless. It was a great opportunity for me to see the museum, of which the wonderful Annnie Fletcher has been at the helm in recent years, and to see the various shows, including the collection show that was being installed. It also gave me the opportunity to revisit the city and some of its art spaces, including the Douglas Hyde Gallery and the Hugh Lane Gallery, both of which offered ample food for thought for different reasons. And it was also a good opportunity to catch up and dip in and out of conversations with Paul himself.
Gerrie van Noord 