For as long as I can remember I have been fascinated (probably more slightly obsessed!) with American First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt. I have a clear memory of dressing up as Eleanor Roosevelt for a dress-up day at school in the 1990s and no-one knew who she was. To be fair for a young Irish child in c.1995 to know firstly about Eleanor Roosevelt and secondly a woman (!) in history was probably, highly unlikely.
In April of this year I had the great good fortune to visit the ‘Mainie Jellett (1897-1944): Translation and Rotation’ (October 2021-May 2022) exhibition at the Ulster Museum, Belfast. This exhibition focused on the work of Mainie Jellett, an Irish artist, who is credited with introducing Modernism to Ireland after looking to European art movements for her artistic inspiration.
On this dreich, grey, and wet, July (!) day there is nothing better than staying inside with a cosy crime novel whilst the weather turns worse outside. The recently published British Library Crime Classics ‘The Edinburgh Mysteries – And Other Tales of Scottish Crime’ compendium of short crime stories centred in Scotland or written by Scottish Authors. Authors from Arthur Conan Doyle to G.K. Chesterton and Josephine Tey to Michael Innes offer us a glimpse into how Scotland has influenced crime from the Golden Era of crime and beyond.
Happy Irish Fashion Friday! As we go into the weekend on what is a dismal July weekday – we’ve had no sun for what seems weeks now – I have some thoughts and tribulations on Irish Fashion and the precarity of working as an Irish dress historian in the museums and heritage world. Like these women above trying to find and work with Irish dress history sources is sometimes, literally, nail-biting!
In my last post I mentioned that I recently visited the Mariano Fortuny museum in Venice in April of this year. This museum had been on my museum bucket list for quite sometime and to say I was not disappointed was an understatement; the museum blew my mind and I would go back again and again.