FEATURE Museum Renews Tradition Dermot Kavanagh Explores Te Tale of Te Storytelling Quilt
Within the museum’s granite walls, I traverse a broad rotunda decorated with statues and capped by a magnificent domed ceiling with glass centre as I enter the National Museum of Ireland-Archaeology in Dublin's City Centre.
Past display cases filled with relics from by-gone ages and up two flights of time-worn stone steps, the recently refurbished Learning Resource room lies. It is here that I am greeted by museum curators Lorraine Comer and Siobhan Pierce. Te Learning Resource room is an airy, bright place, as befits its function as a place for a myriad of adult and children’s workshops. It is a centre of learning and creativity offering services and programmes for adults, families, children and young people. Walking from gallery to gallery, being led from discovery to discovery, visitors come to pause and reflect upon what has been seen.
President Mary McAleese, in one of her final ceremonial acts as President of Ireland, performed the opening of what is sure to prove a most popular facility with both young and old. Te reopening of the Learning Resource room took place on October 7 and the Storytelling Quilt was introduced. In the Year of Craft 2011, it is appropriate that the Crafts Council of Ireland recommend professional longarm quilter Beryl Cadman to create what would become the Storytelling Quilt.