Here to Stay: On the history of Dublin’s Hugh Lane Gallery

“Reprinted with the permission of frieze”

This article first appeared in Frieze Masters under the headline 'Here to Stay'

'Dublin’s Charlemont House – designed by William Chambers and built in 1763 for the first Earl of Charlemont, James Caulfield – is a uniquely beautiful example of a Georgian mansion. Facing onto Parnell Square, this three-storey building sits on an elevated site just north of O’Connell Street, the bustling thoroughfare that meets the River Liffey at the city’s centre. The building has witnessed many changes in Irish society over the past 250 years. It saw Ireland’s return to self-governance after three centuries of British rule – a campaign intensified by the 1916 Easter Rising, where O’Connell Street’s General Post Office became the leaders’ headquarters. This period further coincided with suburbanization and the spread of tenement housing in the area. Economic fluctuations have continued since, from the EU investments of the 1980s to the rise (and fall) of the ‘Celtic Tiger’ boom in the 1990s and 2000s to Dublin’s current place as a stronghold for global technology, housing leading corporations’ European head­quarters. Charlemont House has overlooked the city through the best and worst of times and, in 1933, opened its doors to Dubliners as the Municipal Gallery of Modern Art.'