@michaelwaldron.bsky.social
Curator, art historian, writer (not the MCU guy) Curious about collections, mad about modernism He/him 🏳️🌈🇪🇺🇮🇪
We had a wonderful time on Sat at the opening of Constellations! Thank you to everyone who joined us!
The exhibition will run at @femcwilliam in Banbridge until 2 May as part of Touring & Sharing.
#CrawfordArtGallery #FEMcwilliam #Constellations #CrawfordTouringSharing
'Evening in Soho' (1956) by Edward Ardizzone
(Private collection)
A watercoulour of a herd of hourses at the edge of trees, with a darkening twilight sky behind.
An oil on canvas painting of a bay horse, since in profile, standing in a stable; the door is open, letting in natural light onto the horse, with hay scattered on the floor.
A plaster sculpture of the head of a horse, with its mouth open in a neigh.
Happy Chinese Lunar New Year! 🏮
Today is the first new moon of the lunar calendar, and kicks off the 15-day spring festival as we canter into the #yearofthehorse. 🐴
To celebrate, we’re sharing a few of the equine friends you can find in our collection!
#CrawfordArtGallery #LunarNewYear
Engraving showing a horse in profile
Happy Lunar New Year! This beautiful specimen is from our 1668 edition of 'Markham's master-piece ... touching on curing all diseases in horses', a seminal text on horse care #LunarYear #YearOfTheHorse
17.02.2026 09:33 — 👍 34 🔁 15 💬 1 📌 0
Today I had the pleasure of joining Dr Matthew Whyte to present an art historical deep dive into the collection of @crawfordartgallery.bsky.social as part of his current Irish Art lecture series @triskelartscentre.bsky.social. Great initiative from Sample-Studios!
sample-studios.com/events/art-h...
Great to see the Brontes’ Irish dimension explored in this well-researched piece in yesterday’s Sunday Times.
16.02.2026 21:53 — 👍 24 🔁 13 💬 2 📌 0
‘The World Monuments Fund says it wants to help make the Assembly Rooms part of the social and cultural life of the city.’
Funding boost announced for historic building in Belfast
www.rte.ie/news/ulster/...
Warmest congratulations to Dorothy Cross on her recent election as Saoi of Aosdána!
This honour truly reflects the searching commitment and creative force of Dorothy Cross and the esteem in which she is held.
In celebration, here are some of the artist’s exceptional works in the collection…
What a wonderful day at F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio celebrating Irish contemporary art! Big love to all who attended, the artists, my brilliant colleagues, and Riann Coulter and her wonderful team.
14.02.2026 22:51 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
More info: crawfordartgallery.ie/f-e-mcwillia...
12.02.2026 22:12 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
❤️🔥 Installing…
Constellations: Selected Work from Crawford Art Gallery opens this Saturday 14 February at F.E. McWilliam Gallery & Studio, Banbridge. 14 artists, 141 objects ✨
Pictured: Aideen Barry, Not to be Known (2015)
@crawfordartgallery.bsky.social
What a treat to catch sight of Grace Weir’s totally magic Dust Defying Gravity on @immaireland.bsky.social’s Living Canvas, in the presence of Michael Warren’s monumental Beneath the ‘bow.
11.02.2026 23:21 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0I’ve always loved The Minotaur by Michael Ayrton, in the collection of @crawfordartgallery.bsky.social, little realising that his earlier paintings are equally compelling.
11.02.2026 23:10 — 👍 5 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 1Beautiful paintings. Part of the Beranger watercolour collection in UCD Special Collections.
www.ucd.ie/specialcolle...
Today we're celebrating #EllenHutchins, Ireland's first female field botanist, for Intl Day of Women & Girls in Science! She began to study plants in her early 20s, gathering more than 1,100 plant specimens over several years before passing away age 29. #CrawfordArtGallery #WomenInSTEM #GirlsInSTEM
11.02.2026 20:19 — 👍 26 🔁 10 💬 1 📌 0
'Lights O' London - Glasshouse Street by Piccadilly Circus' (1933) by Rex Vicat Cole
(Private collection)
A bleaching field, Adriaen van de Venne, c. 1620 - 1626 (British Museum)
09.02.2026 21:00 — 👍 37 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 1
Congratulations to Tanja Novacic and Sample-Studios members Danny Foley and Patrick Penney on their new show, Shapeshifting (until 21 February), the outcome of GOMA Waterford’s 2026 Graduate Exhibition Award!
09.02.2026 17:24 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
‘They’re really the root of all European carpets: every carpet you see in a hotel lobby, at the Ritz, for example, is in emulation of these carpets.’
Wolf Burchard on the once-in-a-lifetime unrolling of carpets made for Louis XIV at the Grand Palais in Paris.
'Covent Garden, London' by Jan Griffier I (c.1652–1718)
(Bank of England Museum)
Lots of treasures await at the Bishop’s Palace in Waterford, but the Napoleonic ephemera must be the most unexpected… the city welcomed young bride Letitia Bonaparte-Wyse and she left her pianoforte, mourning cross, and a lock of her uncle’s hair.
07.02.2026 18:23 — 👍 2 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
‘Una Watters had only two solo shows – one a posthumous retrospective in Dublin in 1966. But in the same year, a smaller, less heralded exhibition was mounted in Ballinasloe, Co Galway, her second artistic home.’
unawattersartist.com/2026/01/30/t...
Hidden detail found in Anne Boleyn portrait was ‘witchcraft rebuttal’, say historians
www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026...
In case you didn't catch it in last Saturday's print edition, my review of Irish Romanticism: A Literary History by Claire Connolly is now up on the Irish Times website.
www.irishtimes.com/culture/book...
‘The use of wealth and institutional power by donors to intimidate curators, override professional decision-making and censor artists is antithetical to artistic freedom.’
www.artnews.com/art-news/new...
DRI's training modules are being offered again in March!
Join us online March 4-6th for guidance on depositing collections and objects in the Repository, followed by advanced training and live assistance March 11-13th. See all the courses available on the DRI events page: dri.ie/events/
'One of the great joys of being in Clonakilty for so long is seeing generations come through the door.'
Our Bookshop of the Month is Kerr’s Bookshop in West Cork.
faber.co.uk/journal/independent-bookshop-of-the-month-kerrs-bookshop/
This month, we’ll be celebrating love in all its forms. To kick this off, today we’re sharing this romantic work by Stephen O’Driscoll, a combination of watercolour used for the seaside-scenery and black paper silhouettes for the couple.
#CrawfordArtGallery #theworldneedslove #irishart
Brian Boru Bridge #Cork back in the day #LoveCork #PureCork #CorkLike #FlashbackFriday 📸RTE Archives
06.02.2026 08:01 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
You’re invited! 🎉
Join us at F.E. McWilliam Gallery on 14 February and fall in love with contemporary art at the opening of Constellations: Selected Work from Crawford Art Gallery!
This free event will be held from 3pm-4:30pm.
#CrawfordArtGallery #FEMcwilliam #Constellations #TouringandSharing
