New Showcases Arrive to Transform Groundfloor!

Some of the new showcases being put on to the groundfloor by the lads from Click Netherfield.  These cases will hold material from the National Museum, relating to Prehistoric Galway.

Yesterday marked the arrival of some new showcases for the groundfloor, from Click Netherfield.  These cases will hold the artefacts that are coming on loan from the National Museum - with objects relating to prehistoric and medieval Galway, so they are to the highest standard both from a security and aesthetic point of view.  While we already had some showcases on site, we needed to order more because of the amount of new objects coming on loan. 

These cases will transform the Museum's groundfloor.  This time around we've opted for a good few smaller cases, in order to position them mid-floor and give the visitor a good look at some fine samples (just as some Museums around the world highlight some prehistoric axe heads, or medieval pottery, or maybe in our case some medieval wine bottles which serve to highlight Galway's  trading links with France and Spain in the Middle Ages).

Ríona Egan, from Galway City Museum, with an example of a medieval wine bottle, which will form part of our 'wine collection' on the ground floor.  Galway traded extensively with France and Spain in the middle ages and consequently grew to be one of the wealthiest places in Ireland - some of Galway's merchants (Tribes) owned storehouses elsewhere in the country, from which they sold wine, imported from the continent, to towns around Ireland.

Why are showcases important?
They protect precious objects (these showcases can be separately alarmed).
The climate within these cases can be measured (very important when dealing with precious artefacts that can be affected by the surrounding climate).
They allow us to highlight objects (objects are mounted in cases that suit display).

Dancehall Days Exhibition Gets Great Media Interest...



The Irish Independent featured a pic from our upcoming Dancehall Days exhibition:  Eddie King, Willie Douglas, Chris Egan and Tommy Wade, who were known as The 'Chucker Outs' (they were the men on the doors at Seapoint Ballroom).  This photo is taken from 1966. (Courtesy of Tommy Wade).



The media spotlight this week was firmly on our Dancehall Days exhibition, with great coverage in the Irish Independent today, adding to all the positive pieces from the local papers; Galway Independent, Galway Advertiser, Sentinel and City Tribune. Earlier this week showband star, Jimmy Higgins announced that he was gifting us with the loan of his trumpet for the exhibition, and we've also put the word out that we are looking for that 'special dress' or shoes that may have been worn to the dances in Galway.  As well as including the pic above, the Irish Independent gave a great flavour of the upcoming exhibition by also including a picture of the Quicksilver Dance Band from 1957 and another picture of couples John & Bridie Keeler and Tom & Eileen O'Donnell (nee Welby), from around 1958.

John & Bridie Keeler and Tom & Eileen O'Donnell (nee Welby), circa 1958.  Courtesy of Thomas Keeler Jr.

Quicksilver Dance Band, Hangar Ballroom, circa 1957.

Spotlight on Seapoint - an exhibition that will feature in our redevelopment.

Jimmy Higgins (left), one of Galway's best loved musicians from the Showband era, with Brendan McGowan from Galway City Museum who is working on our upcoming 'Dancehall Days' exhibition.  Jimmy played a wonderful tune to mark the loan of his trumpet to the Museum, Brendan, on the other hand...

Picture the scene: It's 1964 in Galway and there are so many people in the Seapoint ballroom in Salthill that they are climbing through the windows trying to get in! The act on stage that night was The Clancy Brothers, fresh from their hugely successful US tour, but this story, as recalled by Seapoint stallwart Ann Fahy, could have related to any night during the heyday of the 1960s, when some of the country's leading showbands visited Galway.

Ann is one of the many contributors to 'Dancehall Days', an exhibition that will celebrate the great showband era in Galway when people filed into the Seapoint or Hangar Ballrooms, or Marquees up and down the country,  on any given Sunday night (Saturday night dances were not permitted as people were expected to be fresh for mass on Sunday morning).

Another very significant contributor to this exhibition is Jimmy Higgins, the Galway musician who was central to some of the leading showbands of the time, such as The Raindrops and The Millionaires.  Jimmy is loaning his famous trumpet for our upcoming exhibition. Along with his two brothers, Paddy (who played drums), and Francie (who played the saxophone and is now sadly deceased), Jimmy is fondly remembered by all those who attended the many dances at venues throughout Galway.

In a time before mass media and MTV, showbands represented major stars and we had our own 'Elvis' and 'Cliff Richards' in the guise of Brendan Bowyer and Dickie Rock.

Our 'Dancehall Days' exhibition will be unveiled during the second phase of our redevelopment, due to open for the Arts Festival in July.  The initial phase, opening in June, will consist of the groundfloor exhibitions about prehistoric and medieval Galway, as well as our new exhibition  about the Pádraic Ó Conaire statue.

To add to our collection, we are now looking for a loan of that 'special dress' and a pair of shoes that would have been worn out to a dance at Salthill.  According to contributors to the exhibition a common custom would be for sisters to share the same pair of dancing shoes, with one sister leaving them in a hole in the wall for the other to collect on her way to the dance!  Contact us if you have these items for loan:  museum@galwaycity.ie, 091 532460.

Gutting the Ground Floor.

We're officially closed from this week and the heavy work of gutting the groundfloor has well and truly begun.  Carpenters have been busy knocking and sawing so dust is everywhere.  We wrapped the statue of Sean Phádraic in plastic to protect him from all these goings-on and we've taken away all delicate pieces for storage in our collections room while the work continues.  Already we can see the difference in the ground floor - knocking the curved wall partition has opened the place up hugely.  Plinths have been set down into the middle of the ground floor which will hold smaller showcases - ideal to highlight some of the gems that are coming down from the National Museum.  With these showcases we can focus attention on artefacts that relate to various aspects of life in medieval Galway. 

PS:  DON'T FORGET THAT OUR WONDERFUL CAFÉ, THE KITCHEN, WILL BE OPEN AS NORMAL EVERYDAY, SO YOU CAN STILL GET THE BEST COFFEE AND FOOD IN TOWN AND EVEN TRY TO SNEAK A PEAK AT WORK THROUGH THE CAFÉ WINDOW!

It's Public - Big Things Ahead for the Museum!

Fair plé do TG4!  The crew of Nuacht TG4 were in yesterday to film some footage of John Ford's Director's Chair, used on the set of the Quiet Man.  The chair has been kindly loaned to us by John Morris, son of Lord Killanin who was a friend of Ford's and worked on the film as locations manager.

After months of preparation we've finally made public our intention to revamp the Museum from ground floor up, with exhibitions that include:  a brand new look at the Pádraic Ó Conaire statue, Dance Hall Days in Salthill, Cinema in Galway, Maritime Galway, a major exhibition of paintings by Charles Lamb and of course one of the largest loans from the National Museum of Ireland to a regional museum (a loan that includes prehistoric and medieval artefacts, all relating to Galway).  All this means that we are going to have to close the doors of the Museum for a period of six weeks or so while the redevelopment is underway, but we are confident that the public will love the result. For the staff the work from now until June will be hyper intensive, but hugely enjoyable (we hope!) and will definitely result in some wonderful new exhibitions.   The public announcement started with quite a bit of national publicity, thanks to John Morris' generous loan of a true Hollywood coup for the Museum - a Director's Chair from the set of the John Wayne movie, The Quiet Man.  This chair belonged to a real directorial legend, the Steven Spielberg of his generation, John Ford.  The chair was gifted to John Morris's father, Lord Killanin, who worked as Location's Manager for The Quiet Man and was a good friend of Ford's.