Arising from her ashes: Ireland, Ambition and the Great Industrial Exhibition, Dublin 1853

Elizabeth Crooke, Professor of Museum and Heritage Studies, University of Ulster, discusses culture’s utility at the Great Industrial Exhibition. In June 1853 Thomas Connolly, Bishop of St John’s, New Brunswick wrote enthusiastically about the Art and Industrial exhibition in Dublin. He described a vision of Ireland ‘arising from her ashes’, a moment when the visitor could imagine a new Ireland. This paper explores exhibitions and museums as places of reinvention: reimagining the nation and elevating its people. Using Irish newspaper sources, This paper will explore how the Art and Industrial exhibition was framed as a place to forge a new Ireland after the devastation of the famine and reflect upon how we continue to see museums as places of transformation.