The Museum of Childhood Ireland, Músaem Óige na hÉireann’s ‘The Children of Achill & Robert Henri Project & History Festival’ in 2023, inspired an exhibition in the artist’s boyhood home in Nebraska by Jessica Sharkey.
“The Children of Achill and Robert Henri year of Research, followed by a Festival on Achill Island in March 2023 from the Museum of Childhood Ireland, Músaem Óige na hÉireann (MoCI), inspired a successful and engaging exhibition in Cozad, Nebraska.
In the centre of the vast rural Midwest of America, an exhibition called Robert Henri’s Summer Holiday Home, Achill in the West of Ireland was completed and opened to the public on June 29 th, 2023. This exhibition in The Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery, in Cozad, Nebraska, USA, focused on Henri’s portraiture of Irish children, and the context of their creation in Ireland. The exhibition was made possible by the donation of five paintings by William Lord and Sydney Green, who also sponsored the Curatorial Internship program, that I was lucky enough to be awarded that same summer. The paintings which are still currently on display are landscapes by an American contemporary artist called Tom Dimock who was previously an Artist in Residence at the Robert Henri Museum and Gallery. The exhibition consiststed of four oil paintings and a watercolour work showing views of Achill Island, and an information panel that discusses Marjorie Organ Henri and Robert Henri’s time at their residence named Corrymore House, as well as posters from the Children of Achill and Robert Henri festival. Scenes of Achill included a delicate snapshot of Dooagh in watercolour. The oil paintings include a Crew Bay view from Corrymore, a of Clew Bay, a large and textured rendering of Lady Fall Cliff on Slievemore Mountain, and lastly a light and sensitive view of Croaghan from Keel Beach. Tom Dimock’s landscapes invite visitors to consider the natural landscape and topography of Henri’s so-called ‘Holiday Home’ and proved to be a gateway to discussion about Henri’s impact on Achill, and his portraits of the local children.
The Nebraska exhibition followed my attendance at the powerful and insightful festival event entitled ‘The Children of Achill and Robert Henri Festival’ that took place in March 2023, following a year long research project, initiatives and concepts of the Museum of Childhood Ireland (MoCI).
The year-long research project was undertaken by the all-volunteer MoCI team, who also planned the festival day,. The day was sponsored by Mayo County Council which Achill Tourism helped to facilitate.
The MoCI invited the local community ( adults and children) and academics from across the country, as well as from abroad, to gather and discuss the impact Henri and his wife had on the community of the island. As part of the events, students of Dooagh National School on Achill participated in a Paired Portrait workshop. MoCI invited local artist Kate Callaghan to facilitate. The workshops by the MoCI team with the children took place over many weeks before the festival began. A Child Rights and Participation consultation took place inviting the children to be active participants and to consider with the MoCI on how best to work together, using the Lundy Model of Participation, underpinned by the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. By engaging in these activities, and later in a workshop alongside the MoCI’s art historians, the children looked at Henri’s processes as an artist – the colours and techniques he used. There followed reflections in empathy – looking at each other as both the artist and sitter, considering what is involved in portrait painting as an artist, and what being an artist’s subject involves, all successfully igniting deeper conversations around painting, Robert Henri, his sitters, agency, choice, and the past, especially as many of the children are direct ancestors of the sitters. It opened a door to further exploration and the value of questioning. The children also undertook their own research project and it can be viewed on the MoCI’s page too.
The Children of Achill & Robert Henri Project & History Festival – The Museum of Childhood Ireland
Involved from the MoCI were Majella McAllister, Dr. Sarah-Anne Buckley, Dr. Sorcha De Brún, Jessica Burton-Restrick, Dorotheé Schmid McCoole, Dakota Oliveira, and Aoife Cawley. External academics invited by the museum were Prof. Ciara Breathnach, Dr. John Cunningham, Dr. Róisín Kennedy, Dr. Angela Griffith, Dr. Paula Murphy, and Dr. Theresa McDonald. Attending too were William Lord, Sydney Green, and Sarah Lavelle ( a descendant of two subjects of Henri’s portraits, and the Achill Islander responsible for reaching out to the MoCI)
It was during the festival in March that my interest in Henri’s life and portraiture crystallised and planted the questions that would form the basis of my current PhD research. Guests listened intently to the stories that emerged relating to Henri’s time there, or the contextualising of local and national history during, and prior to Henri’s arrival. The striking fact from my perspective, was the realisation from information supplied by the MoCI’s researchers and speakers that while hundreds of portraits were made in Ireland, none of them remain today, and Henri’s work on Achill is not currently represented in the Irish National Collection and is instead dispersed across America and the wider world. The MoCI would be interested in displaying Henri’s portraits of the children when they have secured their permanent building.
Based on the MoCI’s successful research and presentation, Mayo County Council subsequently sponsored the hire of an external researcher for the MoCI to undertake an oral history project on Achill, which was completed in 2024. This was presented by the MoCI in August at a festival during Heritage Week, and the findings will be published on the website shortly. As part of this local children and older adults took part in an oral history exercise and comic book making workshop based on the findings. The Museum of Childhood Ireland’s Oral Histories Research from Achill, will be presented to and held in a digital repository housed by the James Hardiman Library, NUIG, along with relevant documents. A living archive, it will be added to and built upon over time by the MoCI.
The highlight for many attendees at the MoCI’s 2023 conference was the display of the children’s portraiture work. They lined the walls, at child height, in Keel community centre and demonstrated a thirst for knowledge of the past, its relevance to the present, the future, the colourful variety and limitless creativity of the local children and the MoCI’s commitment to ensuring children are front and centre in all they do. Images of their portraits can be viewed on the Museum of Childhood Ireland website:
https://museumofchildhood.ie/paired-portrait-art-workshop/
It was this MoCI display that I reflected on while in Nebraska. The involvement of children in the festival proved to be an invigorating and enriching experience that stayed with me during my curatorial internship in Nebraska. When designing an exhibition relating to Achill, I sought to ensure the space would be accessible and interesting to children. I considered this with the hanging plan, as well as the inclusion of the Museum of Childhood Ireland’s posters that featured Henri’s portraits of the children. While giving tours of the exhibition at the Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery, I would seize every opportunity to discuss MoCI’s incredible Paired Portrait workshop, Research and Festival, as well as point out the Irish language that Músaem Óige na hÉireann used on the poster, to share even more Irish culture and history with the visitors in Nebraska. The inclusion of the MoCI’s posters in English, as well as Irish, invited visitors to try to learn some Irish while experiencing the exhibition, and was particularly popular with the children who visited. Visitors left the space understanding Robert Henri’s impact on Achill, and with a cúpla focal, or an understanding a a few words in Irish.
With the assistance of the Board Member and Treasurer of the Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery, Chuck Birgen, and the Executive Director, a published historian, Mr. Peter Osborne, paintings were hung in the Hotel Parlour room which is right next to the lobby where visitors enter the museum. This meant that visitors to the museum had the opportunity to explore Henri’s Irish period through views of Achill Island, and then were escorted to the Gallery space where they could see the portraits of Macnamara 1925, and Bridgeen (1927)
Mcnamara, 1925, Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery, oil on canvas, Loan from the Collection of Tammy and Larry Paulsen, In Memory of Ike and Shirley Paulsen.
Bridgeen, 1927, Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery, Gift of an anonymous donor.
Jessica Sharkey, Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery curatorial intern of 2023 pictured hanging the ‘Robert Henri’s Summer Holiday Home, Achill in the West of Ireland’ exhibition. Photograph by Chuck Birgen, Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery, Treasurer and Board Member, 2023.
Art students were also visited at the local community school in Cozad in August, and collectively discussed Robert Henri’s impact in Ireland, specifically on Achill Island, and engaged with a visual comic strip of Henri’s life. The comic strip brought in a new audience and provided an alternative for younger visitors who might be less interested in the standard tour of the museum. The comic also introduced Henri’s biography to the art students in the community school and inspired several students to volunteer at the museum and gallery.
In my next post I’ll share a code that hasn’t been deciphered since Henri wrote it in his diary as a 15 year old in 1880!
I really enjoyed solving it….”
Jessica Sharkey, Museum of Childhood Ireland Team Member, November 2024
Robert Henri Biographical Comic strip, by Jessica Sharkey for the Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery in Cozad talk at Cozad Community School, Nebraska, August 2023.
For more information about the Children of Achill and Robert Henri festival see the link below:
https://museumofchildhood.ie/robert-henri-and-the-children-of-achill-island-1913-1928/
For more information about the Robert Henri Museum and Art Gallery in Nebraska, see the link
below:
https://www.roberthenrimuseum.org/