Butler Gallery Collection featuring loans from the IMMA Collection

The Butler Gallery has an outstanding resource in its fine permanent collection. Established in 1943, the collection has continued to flourish through gift, loan and purchase. The gallery has an ongoing commitment to make sure this collection is exhibited and enjoyed by the public. Including loans from the Sir Basil Goulding Collection and from private collections, the Butler Gallery Collection is an eclectic catalogue of diverse genres that can be read and appreciated on many levels.

For our 2017 collection exhibition we are honored to include a very special group of works on loan from the Permanent Collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art (IMMA). This group incorporates a seminal sculpture by Louise Bourgeois, self-portraits by Chuck Close and John Coplans, prints by Alex Katz and Paula Rego, and a photographic portrait by Thomas Ruff. The theme of Personae running through the exhibition focuses our eye on portraits, figures or other forms that either readily reveal or camouflage an identity. Narratives indisputably evolve upon viewing works as diverse as the openness and glamour of Diane Arbus’s Girl in a shiny dress, NYC 1967 to the enigma of Jackie Nickerson’s portrait of a young bride in the Oman, whose upper body is covered by a transparent veil barely revealing her identity.

The works from IMMA have been selected in response to, or in sympathy with, the works chosen for this exhibition from the Butler Gallery Permanent Collection. The IMMA selection adds freshness and maintains currency in the viewing of beloved works in the ever-evolving collection we are fortunate to maintain here in Kilkenny.

Anna O’Sullivan
Director

Discovery Pens will be available to visitors, giving access to additional audio information. This is facilitated in partnership with Arts & Disability Ireland, with funding from the Arts Council.

With thanks to the Arts Council for essential annual funding and to the OPW, FÁS, The Heritage Council and Kilkenny Local Authorities for additional assistance. Special thanks are extended to the team at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, who made this loan happen.