Bringing the past to life is Eithne’s passion

City Lives – Director of Galway Museum Eithne  Verling talks to Bernie Ní Fhlatharta

For a woman whose work is based on the past, Eithne Verling has her eye very much on the future – the future of the Galway City Museum in particular.

This week, the Limerick native took up her new position as Director of the museum, a facility she is very familiar with having worked there as a freelance consultant for the past year and having lived in Galway on and off since she was a college student.

Her freelance work with the museum involved programming exhibitions up to early next year, which means she can concentrate for now on making the facility a breathing, living, meaningful place for local people.

She is determined to increase the footfall into the building and to expand its repertoire so that it reflects both contemporary and old Galway.

“I know that there are still so many people in Galway who have never set foot in the museum and I want to change that. I want to make Galway people feel connected to it. . .  and I want more interaction with the community,” she says with enthusiasm.

Eithne’s CV is impressive and she has been working in the ‘field’ since she graduated in archaeology, having worked on excavations, in museums, on heritage projects and on a national brief involved in archiving.

While working with the Dublin based Heritage Council for eight years, she was involved in writing policies advising museums around the country. In fact she wrote the brief for the feasibility study for the Galway City Museum.

“My main job with the Heritage Council was to develop a standard for the national museum programme across all operational aspects of museums,” she says acknowledging that the city museum had righted a few teething problems.

“I would really like to look at ways we could collaborate with local agencies and communities so that people know it’s an accessible place. We need to invite people in because people do feel intimidated by museums. Our job is to break down those barriers and make them more accessible places. I want to find those people and bring them in.

“I also want to build up our education programme with schools and develop more links with NUIG and GMIT.”

Eithne also feels it’s important to make the heritage of the medieval city more visible and to look at ways of animating the city.

“I would love to animate the waterways for instance. The Corrib is fascinating. . .  there were 16 dugout canoes (boats made from hallowed tree trunks believed to be from the Bronze Age) found buried in the Corrib.

“There’s also the history of the Claddagh, the story of emigration from the West and I am very keen on exploring the whole science of the area for the museum,” she said warming even more to the subject.

Eithne is excited about her new job, which after all, will oversee a building in the city that welcomes 160,000 visitors a year across its threshold, a greater number than that experienced by the Country Life Museum in Mayo, she adds.

Referring to the controversy over the Daly Collection – a collection of important Irish art that was donated to Galway City Council, but kept in storage by the local authority, and then subsequently returned to the family – Eithne says there are huge responsibilities with materials given to museums on loan.

“There has to be a very clear understanding that material lent to cultural institutions costs money, not only in storage but on insurance and sometimes in restoring works.

“I certainly want to increase our own collection and it would be great to have a budget for that. We have some storage on site but I would like to improve off-site storage.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City  Tribune.