This project by the art collective Na Cailleacha, is part of their ongoing aim to increase visibility for women artists and to challenge patriarchy. They have taken a key work of European Renaissance art history, Raphael’s School of Athens (Vatican Museum 1509–1511), and recreated it to reflect a more inclusive world view. Raphael’s original fresco drew together the dominant influences on academia deriving from Ancient Greece and led by such male figures as Plato, Aristotle, Pythagoras, Euclid and Archimedes. Na Cailleacha’s full-scale re-enactment of Raphael’s School of Athens with an all-women cast is set in the Museum Building of Trinity College Dublin. This image features forty-one contemporary Irish women from a variety of age profiles and backgrounds, all leaders in their fields, who have contributed to human knowledge.

Na Cailleacha is a collective of six visual artists: Helen Comerford, Barbara Freeman, Patricia Hurl, Rachel Parry, Therry Rudin, Gerda Teljeur; one jazz musician Carole Nelson and curator / writer Catherine Marshall who have come together to explore being female, older creatives.

Presenting the School of Hibernia (after Raphael) on Saturday 2 November at 3pm

This panel discussion features members of the arts collective Na Cailleacha: curator / writer Catherine Marshall and artist Gerda Teljeur; alongside choreographer Cindy Cummins who all participated in The School of Hibernia. The School of Hibernia is on exhibition at Uillinn from 1 to 11 November.

The project aimed to undermine patriarchal systems of thought and knowledge in western education as transmitted from Ancient Greece to the Italian Renaissance and thence to the present day. To do this Na Cailleacha invited leading Irish women to take part in a tableau based on Raphael’s famous School of Athens fresco in the Vatican, but with an emphasis on women’s contribution to education as we know it today in place of Raphael’s male dominated cast. The tableau took place in Trinity College and included such participants as Mary Robinson, first woman Chancellor of the University and Dr Linda Doyle its first woman Provost.

Catherine will give an overview of the project and the themes it addresses; Gerda will offer an insight into the process, especially costume-provision from her perspective as a member of the art collective behind it, and Cindy will discuss her role in the choreographical and theatrical aspects of the event, and what it meant to her to be invited to participate.