National Museums Northern Ireland

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Scope of Collection: Collection history (Collection development policy)

National Museums NI was established as National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland under the Museums and Galleries (Northern Ireland) Order 1998. It comprises four museums that were founded at different times and for different purposes. The summaries below are indicative, rather than comprehensive.
The national collection has been almost 200 years in the making. It is an amalgam of institutional histories and the passions of generations of curators, scholars and enthusiasts. Although the thinking about collecting and collections has evolved over time (and continues to evolve), the creation of the national collection has always been fundamentally driven by the desire to record and preserve what is important about the world that we live in and our place within it.

Ulster Museum
The Ulster Museum is the oldest of the four, its collections originating with the formation and activities of the Belfast Natural History Society (1821), re-named the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society (1842), and the closely associated Belfast Naturalists’ Field Club (1863). During most of the 19th century, their focus was on developing collections mainly in the area of natural history, but also archaeology and ethnography, and displaying these in the Belfast Museum which had been opened by the Society in 1831. Separately, in 1890, the opening, by the Belfast Town Council of the Belfast Art Gallery and Museum provided a catalyst for broader collections development, embracing not only art but also antiquities and a greater capacity for natural history specimens. A critical mass was created in 1910 when the collections of the Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society were acquired by the Belfast Art Gallery and Museum. This led ultimately to the construction of a new building, the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery at Botanic Gardens, which opened in 1929, and the establishment, through the Museum Act (Northern Ireland) 1961, of the Ulster Museum as a national institution. The Ulster Museum opened in 1972.

The nature and development of the Ulster Museum’s collections reflect the above history. A number of 19th-century natural historians, travellers and benefactors are particularly noteworthy. These include William Thompson (botany and ornithology), Sir James Emerson Tennant (entomology), Gordon A Thomson and George Benn (antiquities), and James McAdam (palaeontology). Embracing most, if not all, of these areas was Canon John Grainger who, shortly before his death in 1891, donated his complete collection of geological and zoological specimens, antiquities and art objects to the Belfast Art Gallery and Museum – as a result of which he has subsequently been referred to as ‘The Father of the Ulster Museum’. All these subject areas have been enriched and enhanced by subsequent collecting, several aspects meriting mention. Critical to the development of the botany collection was the gift by The Queen’s University of Belfast of its herbarium (1968).

A substantial part of the Archaeology collection is derived from the early days of antiquarian activity in Ireland during the mid-1800s; from material displayed in the ‘Belfast Museum’ (1831-1910). Some of these archaeological collections, including those of the Rev. Canon Grainger, are substantial. While the majority of the collections and objects on display were found by members of the public, the Museum acquired a number of pioneering excavations particularly those from Neolithic megalithic tombs. Excavations undertaken by previous members of staff include evidence of Ireland’s earliest settlers at Mount Sandel Co. Londonderry and substantial holdings from the urban medieval excavations of Carrickfergus.

The collection and display of industrial archaeology formed part of the policy of the Ulster Museum from the 1960s, under the then Directorship of Mr William Seaby. The driving force for this activity was W.A. McCutcheon, who conducted new and intensive research into the subject matter between 1956 and 1968 and expressed his ‘deep conviction of the relevance and validity of industrial archaeology’. From 1968 to 1974 this research was translated into new displays on engineering history at the Ulster Museum. Machinery and other material culture were accessioned into the permanent collection of the Ulster Museum, whilst archival material and photographs associated with McCutcheon’s research were gifted to the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI). The Ulster Museum’s collection includes material from all of the major industries for which the north of Ireland was once renowned, including linen production, heavy engineering, ship-building, rope making and brick making.

The development of the art collection was stimulated during the early part of the last century by some significant gifts and bequests. The former are exemplified through JMW Turner’s The Dawn of Christianity, gifted in 1913, and 34 of his own works presented by the distinguished Belfast-born artist Sir John Lavery in 1929. The bequest of Sir Robert Lloyd Patterson, given to the Belfast Art Gallery and Museum in 1919, was significant in that the paintings were sold some ten years later, with the approval of the trustees of Lloyd Patterson, on condition that the proceeds be used to acquire other works representative of the contemporary British school. This was an important factor in the subsequent shaping of the collection which, through successive shifts in acquisition policy, has grown to encompass not just the work of Irish painters but also British, European and American, both historical and contemporary.

Since the 1890s, acquisitions for the Fine Art collection have been made by purchase, gift and bequest, either from individual benefactors or on behalf of organisations including the Art Fund, the Contemporary Art Society, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Elisabeth Frink Foundation, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, the Haverty Trust and the Friends of the National Collections of Ireland. Notable acquisitions have been supported by grants from the Art Fund, the Esme Mitchell Trust, the Friends of the Ulster Museum, the Department for Communities, the Heritage Lottery Fund and the National Heritage Memorial Fund. A small number of acquisitions have been made by public subscription. In 2012, the Arts Council NI collection was gifted to National Museums NI. Since 1998, the Fine Art collection has been enriched through the acceptance in lieu of six major works. The Dutch collection has been significantly strengthened by the allocation of a Jan van der Heyden, an exceptional Jacob van Ruisdael and six etchings by Rembrandt. The Post-war British collection has received major works by Ben Nicholson and Frank Auerbach. Most recently, in 2021, a magnificent Tissot of an Irish sitter has filled what had been a serious gap in the 19th century European and British collection.

The works of art on paper collection, the largest fine art collection, has multiple areas of strength owing to significant donations and past acquisitions. Many of these donations were given in the late 19th and early 20th century forming the foundation of the collection, the treasured Henry Fuseli drawings were given by the first curator of the Art Gallery when it was on Royal Avenue, in 1890. A significant donation of wood engravings from Lady Mabel Annesley given in 1939 forms the basis of the print collection and various schemes, such as the National Art Collections Fund, have bequeathed important works e.g. by Ruskin and Rossetti. Donations of local importance by individuals such as John and Roberta Hewitt have also been significant.

The applied art collections, which comprise ceramics, glass, silver and metalwork, furniture and wood, costume and textiles, jewellery and a childhood collection has two areas of particular strength, namely the 18th century and the contemporary period. The historic collections are of predominantly Irish material, and the contemporary are international in scope. The Ulster Museum represents the only public collection of international contemporary applied art in Ireland.

The current Ulster Museum collection of fashionable dress, accessories, and textiles essentially replaces the one that was lost when Malone House, where the former collection was stored, was burnt down following its bombing in 1976. Beginning from a ‘clean slate’ the museum was forced to re-examine our collecting policy. This prompted a particular focus on developing a strong 20th-century fashion collection. Each year, since 1984, two complete outfits for spring/summer and autumn/winter have been purchased – one International designer outfit and one high street outfit. This unbroken chain of contemporary fashion acquisitions is a unique achievement for the Ulster Museum, one of the very first museums in the world to recognise the significance of collecting contemporary fashion. As far as rebuilding the textile collection, major acquisitions concentrated on areas where the nucleus of a collection was still in existence, including the important 1712 Lennox Quilt.

Between 2016 and 2020 the Ulster Museum developed its history and art collections through ‘Collecting the Troubles and Beyond’, funded through the National Lottery Heritage Fund’s Collecting Cultures programme. This involved the acquisition of significant collections including the NI Prison Service collection, the James Ellis collection, the Tom Hartley collection, artwork by Geordie Morrow and contemporary photographic collections representing well-known photographers including Martin Nangle and Frankie Quinn. This collecting activity focussed on Northern Ireland’s recent past and its legacy that continues today.

Ulster Folk Museum
The genesis of the Folk Museum lies in a memorandum prepared in 1943 about a post-war policy for the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery (see paragraph 2.2.1) in which the then Director, Sidney Stendall, advocated the creation of an open-air museum. This aspiration was pursued by his successor Wilfred Seaby and, following a favourable report presented to the Northern Ireland Parliament, the Ulster Folk Museum Act was passed in 1958. The Folk Museum’s remit was to illustrate the ways of life, past and present, and the traditions of the people of Northern Ireland. Individuals influential to the development of the Folk Museum included, in addition to those mentioned above, Estyn Evans, a pioneer in the study of folk culture in Ireland, and its Directors, George Thompson and Alan Gailey. The current site, at Cultra, County Down, was purchased in 1961.

The Folk Life and Agriculture collections focus on ways of life and traditions of the people of Northern Ireland in a western European context from the late nineteenth century through to the early decades of the twentieth century. They include material culture representing buildings, domestic life, agriculture, craft and textiles, and nonmaterial culture including traditional music and oral histories. Duncrun Cottier’s House was the first building to be selected, dismantled and brought to the Cultra site in 1961. The building was re-erected and completed in 1963. The Ulster Folk Museum formally opened in July 1964 along with the Coalisland Spade Mill. They were soon joined by more buildings and the rural area of the open-air museum began to flourish. The rural area of the open-air museum is a representation of a dispersed settlement, common to Ireland, with dwellings and public buildings reflecting regional variations scattered through an open landscape. Much was put into the spaces between buildings, the ditches, the field boundaries etc. as well as the construction of the buildings themselves. Most of the buildings were brought brick by brick from their original locations, Ballydugan Weaver’s House being the only replica building in the rural area of the museum. In due course, the museum decided to establish a small town. Some of the buildings in this area had already been reconstructed to be part of the dispersed settlement, but they were later incorporated into the new townscape. With the building of the town, there was a drift towards constructing replica buildings, instead of moving entire buildings from their original situation, as had been the earlier policy. Today, there are over 50 buildings on the site.

In parallel with these developments, an equally wide-ranging body of material relating to ways of life and traditions was collected through targeted fieldwork over many years. This has not only complemented the buildings but also provided important evidence of the rich social fabric of Ulster and the day-to-day lives of people. It covers such areas as farming, crafts and domestic life through both objects and archives. The latter include rich collections of photographs, the most important of which are those taken by W A Green and R J Welch, and sound recordings covering oral and aural histories such as music, folk tales and linguistic diversity.

The foundation for the costume and textiles collection was laid by one of the first group of curators, Katherine Harris, in the early 1960s. Harris’ background in geography and ethnography served her well as she explored and collected fine examples of local dress and textiles, in many cases directly in conversation with those who were born and raised in the late 1800s. Her interest in material culture and traditional craft skills spanned across a range of media including straw work, needlework and everyday dress. Over a period of almost ten years Harris collected, exhibited and published aspects of the Folk Museum’s collection of dress and textiles. Some of the most significant objects in the collection were acquired during this period, including fine examples of Irish lace, linens, and bedcovers.

In the fifty years since Katherine Harris’ retirement from the museum, the collection has been developed further by three successive Curators of Textiles, each bringing with them, in turn, specialisms in the study of Home Economics, Folklore, and Design for Fashion and Textiles. As a result, the collection has grown considerably in both size and quality to its present status as a comprehensive archive of dress and textiles in Ulster from 1730 to the present day. A recently developed contemporary collecting plan has supported the acquisition, through purchase, of a number of objects illustrating technical and design skills, from Irish makers.

Ulster Transport Museum
Alongside the emergence of the Folk Museum, a museum dedicated to transport was also being considered by the above-mentioned Wilfred Seaby, Director of the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery. A local committee of transport enthusiasts presented a number of vehicles, mainly rail, to the Belfast Museum on the understanding that they, together with other transport items already in the Museum’s collection, would be maintained and developed. Between 1954 and 1956, two buildings were leased in Belfast to hold the growing collection. New premises at Witham Street, Belfast, were purchased in 1960, a curator was appointed in 1961 and the new Belfast Transport Museum, under Belfast Corporation control, was opened in June 1962. It remained under Corporation control until responsibility was transferred to the Trustees of the Folk Museum in 1967 through the Ulster Folk Museum Amendment Act. At the same time, the Dalchoolin site, located a short distance away from the Folk Museum, was acquired as the site for the new Transport Museum. In 1973, the official name of the institution was changed to The Ulster Folk and Transport Museum to reflect the amalgamation.

Today the Transport Museum lies within a 40-acre site, representing almost forty years of incremental development in the opening of a Transport Gallery in 1976, a Rail Gallery in 1993 and a Road Gallery (1995). Influential figures in the early development of the transport collections, particularly road and rail, included the first curator, Robert Beggs, and Robert Galbraith. These collections include extensive and representative holdings of Irish railway vehicles, significant items being received from the Ulster Transport Authority (now Translink) and Córas Iompair Éireann. Public and private road transport is reflected in items ranging from horse-drawn vehicles to a De Lorean car.

The collections also cover transport associated with sea and sky. Of particular significance in the former category are Result, a 19th-century schooner, one of some 200 vessels comprising the UK National Historic Fleet and ship plans from Harland & Wolff, Belfast’s major shipyard, including design drawings for Titanic. The latter includes items ranging from a Shorts SC.1 vertical take-off aircraft, a Rex McCandless designed autogyro to a Martin Baker ejector seat and a Merlin Spitfire engine. Due to challenges associated with collections care and storage and a lack of curatorial expertise, the maritime and aviation collections have not been reviewed or significantly developed since the late 1990s.

Ulster American Folk Park
The Ulster American Folk Park opened in 1976, two individuals – Eric Montgomery and Dr. Matthew T. Mellon – being particularly prominent in its establishment and early development. The former had been instrumental in setting up the Ulster Scot Historical Society (now the Ulster Historical Foundation) to undertake research into Ulster-American links. During the 1960s, with government support and the active cooperation of the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland, Eric Montgomery developed proposals to restore the ancestral homes of notable Americans whose forebears had emigrated from Ulster. One such building was a County Tyrone farmhouse, birthplace of Judge Thomas Mellon, the banking and industrial magnate of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. This was the context in which Dr. Mellon expressed his interest and his support would lead to the restoration of the Mellon Farmstead and, ultimately, the creation of the Ulster American Folk Park.

The site, approx. 80 acres, seeks to tell the story of emigration from Ulster to America from the 17th to the 19th centuries and uses objects and buildings to reflect experiences in both places. Whilst the Ulster dimension is more developed, largely through eight vernacular buildings, significant progress has been made in correcting this imbalance by the importation and reconstruction of historic structures, now numbering five, from Pennsylvania, Virginia and Tennessee.

While objects in the collection cover primarily domestic life and crafts, and farming, they also cover areas that inform the wider story of emigration, the most noteworthy being the Paul Louden-Brown White Star Line Collection acquired in 2010. Comprising over 7000 objects, it illustrates the context of Titanic through the history of its parent company.

Source: Collection development policy

Date: 2022

Licence: CC BY-NC

Collection overview (Collection development policy)

The collections of National Museums NI are estimated to be in the region of 1.4 million items. The collections are multidisciplinary, diverse and span all time periods, referencing Northern Ireland within and to the wider world. Historically, they have grown on the site-based framework of the Ulster Museum, the Ulster Folk Museum, the Ulster Transport Museum and the Ulster American Folk Park. However, since similar collection types can relate to more than one site, they are more appropriately classified within three broad and complementary subject areas. National Museums NI will continue to collect within these subject areas and the time periods and geographic areas to which they relate. The subject areas are:

Art
History
Natural Sciences
Art

The art collections include fine and applied art and incorporate both historical and contemporary material, mainly within an Irish context but also including some significant international holdings. In excess of 14,000 works, the art collection contains paintings, sculptures, works on paper, lens-based media, Troubles art, glass, ceramics, silver and metalwork, jewellery, furniture, costume and textiles. These collections are significant at both a national and an international level.

The Irish Art collection spans the 17th century to the contemporary. Almost all major Irish artists and movements are represented, with particular strengths in landscape, portraiture and subjects associated with the north and west of Ireland. In 1929, the Belfast-born Sir John Lavery (1856-1941), a leading ‘Irish Impressionist’, donated thirty-four paintings from all periods of his career including ‘Under the Cherry Tree’ and ‘The Green Coat’, a dazzling full-length portrait of his wife Hazel. The landscape and life of the West of Ireland is of particular importance characterised, during the early 20th century, by the work of Paul Henry, William Orpen, Jack B.Yeats and Sean Keating, and in the post-war generation by Gerard Dillon, Derek Hill, Barrie Cooke and many others. Strengths of the twentieth-century collection include Irish Modernism and Irish artists of international importance, such as Mainie Jellett, Louis le Brocquy, William Scott and Willie Doherty. The figurative tradition remains strong in Northern Irish post-war painting, and is represented by Charles Lamb, William Conor, Colin Middleton, John Luke, Dan O’Neill, Basil Blackshaw and many others. In portraiture, a group of 18th century Belfast sitters by Strickland Lowry and Joseph Wilson is notable, as is a series of 20th-century literary portraits, including the first Portrait of Seamus Heaney commissioned from Edward McGuire in 1974, and the last portrait completed months before the poet’s death in 2013 by Colin Davidson. Recent acquisitions have focused on the Irish landscape, and include work by Elizabeth Magill, Melita Denaro, William McKeown and Paddy McCann.

The 20th century and contemporary collection are of outstanding international importance. Successive curators have strengthened these areas to form one of the most impressive collections of modern and contemporary art in the U.K. outside London. The early 20th-century British collection includes work by Stanley Spencer, Walter Sickert, Duncan Grant and others of their generation. The International Post-war represents the largest and most important area of the collection, and includes Sam Francis, Joan Mitchell and ‘Colour Field’ artists Morris Louis, Kenneth Noland and Helen Frankenthaler. European post-war painting is represented by, among others, Karel Appel, Jean Dubuffet and Antoni Tapies, and the German ‘Group Zero’ by Gunther Uecker, Otto Piene and others. British art is particularly strong in abstract painting with excellent St. Ives artists including Peter Lanyon, Roger Hilton, William Scott and Ben Nicholson. Two of the most important works in the collection are an exceptional early Francis Bacon Head 11 (1949), and a seminal Barbara Hepworth Curved Form (Delphi), (1955). The later 1960s, 70s and 80s includes work by Bridget Riley, Anthony Caro, Joseph Beuys, Gilbert and George and many others. Recent acquisitions include the manga-influenced Japanese painter Makiko Kudo, Belfast-born Hannah Starkey, whose photographic work considers the urban experience of young women, and two sculptures that address themes of climate emergency and migration; The Dog that lost its Nose (2009) by Siobhan Hapaska and Blue Sky Thinking (2019) by Patrick Goddard. A collection of time-based media was begun in 2008, and includes major work by Willie Doherty, Bill Fontana and Cornelia Parker.

The Italian collection includes some of the first paintings to enter the Ulster Museum collection. In 1893, an exceptional pair of genre portraits by Giacomo Ceruti were bought as ‘foundation pictures’ and are the most important works by the artist in the UK. The collection was transformed in the 1960s by the acquisition of two major 17th century paintings, Allegory of Fortune by Lorenzo Lippi and St Cecelia by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli. The Flemish collection includes a small group of 15th-century panels attributed to the Master of the Legend of St. Catherine, the Master of the Female Half- lengths and an impressive School of Bruges ‘Virgin and Child’, known as the Carrickfergus Madonna. The acquisition of Moses Striking the Rock by Hendrik van Balen, a gift through the Art Fund in 2021, has considerably strengthened the Flemish collection. The Dutch collection has recently been transformed by two major acceptances in lieu: The Cornfield by Jacob van Ruisdael, a masterpiece of international importance from the Beit Collection, Russborough, and a View of the Palace of the Dukes of Brabant, Brussels by Jan van der Heyden. The British collection is strongest in portraiture, usually of sitters with local or Irish connections. One of the most important paintings in the collection is an exceptionally fine late work by J.M.W. Turner The Dawn of Christianity (The Flight into Egypt), 1841. Most recently, in 2021, a magnificent Tissot Quiet, 1881, of an Irish sitter, has filled what had been a serious gap in nineteenth-century French and British painting.
There are two major strengths to the works of art on paper collection, the first is its ability to demonstrate various shifts and important movements in this mode of artistic production: Works by John Ruskin and J.D. Harding demonstrate the emergence of watercolour painting being popularised and considered a ‘fine art’. A large collection of wood engravings represents the importance of the wood-engraving revival and how women artists were at its centre. A donation of Rembrandt etchings through the acceptance in lieu of tax scheme celebrate his impact on printmaking which can be seen through over 300 years of the practice in the collection. The second strength is seen through large, or significant, holdings of work by individual artists including, for example, Henry Fuseli, Andrew Nicholl, Elisabeth Frink and Mainie Jellett.
The Ulster Museum has the largest collection of artworks that relate to the Troubles. Throughout the 30-year period and up until today artists from Northern Ireland and beyond have responded to the conflict through their artistic practice and a variety of media, including painting, sculpture, works on paper, lens-based and ceramic. During the period of the conflict, the Ulster Museum did collect several significant artworks, including Woman in Bomb Blast, 1974, by F. E. McWilliam, …morning workers pass…, 1978, Rita Donagh, Ulster Crucifixion, 1978, Ken Howard and The Other Cheek?, 1998, John Keane. It is only in more recent times, which has included the substantial gift of the Arts Council of Northern Ireland’s collection in 2012 that the collection has grown to its current level of significance. Since 2014 the Ulster Museum has also acquired work by artists including Mary McIntyre, Donovan Wylie, Dan Shipsides, Gerry Gleason, Peter Richards, Ursula Burke, Jack Pakenham and Gladys Maccabe, through purchase, gifts and donations.
The Arts Council of Northern Ireland (ACNI) gifted collection provides the context and foundation of the wider Ulster Museum art collection. It demonstrates contemporary artistic practice in the region across the past 40 years, not just through local artists work but also through the international – with artists who exhibited or worked here. It also reflects more than just the physical art, but maps the galleries and cultural activity of this place. Though it is one gift it represents two collections; the CEMA collection, formed in the early years of Northern Ireland’s existence and the ACNI collection, which began in the mid-1960s and as a result represents the artistic practice in relation to the conflict. Another area of strength is the number of works that connect to performance. It can be seen as a teaching collection as it teaches us about our own visual past.

The fashion collection has several strengths. The historic fashionable dress section is especially strong in the 18th century. This includes an 18th-century court suit belonging to the 2nd Earl of Belvedere, a cut velvet and metal thread suit worn by the Black Rod of the Irish Houses of Parliament in 1751, and a rare court mantua gown. Additionally, the donation of the textile heiress Elizabeth Balfour Clark’s 1911 court dress and train has highlighted an emerging collection of court dress with the Ulster Museum. Also held are outfits of almost every year from the mid-18th century to the present day. The fashion dolls, which complement the historic garments, are the most important element of the childhood collection. However, it is the 20th-century haute couture and contemporary fashions which are the most distinctive elements of the fashion collection. Every designer of note is represented, from Poiret, Chanel and Dior to McQueen, Galliano and Westwood. High street retailers both physical and online are also represented.
In terms of textiles there is a small but important collection of 18th-century bed furniture, mostly by named Irish embroiders. This includes the 1712 Lennox Quilt made by Martha Lennox, daughter of the Sovereign of Belfast, the Delany bedcover, a by Mary Delany, the well-connected 18th-century artist and epistolarian, and the Antrim bed furniture, a complete set worked by or under the supervision of Lady Helena McDonnell, 1705-83, daughter of the 4th Earl of Antrim. Important tapestries and other textile wall art include the 18th-century Pilgrimage to Mecca set by Paul Saunders, Arabesque by Joshua Morris and the mid-20th century Adam and Eve by Louis le Brocquy. Most important of all, however, are two large wall hangings, Océanie – Le Ciel and Océanie – La Mer, by the French artist Henri Matisse.

The main strengths of the ceramics collection lie in British and European historic ceramics, Irish ceramics, Asian and the contemporary. The British and European historic collection comprehensively documents the development of pottery and porcelain from the late 16th century. The Irish collection, which has pieces dating from the 18th century is representative of all the major potteries in Ireland. There are significant and unique pieces of, amongst others, Dublin delftware by Henry Delamain, excavated material from the Downshire pottery, Belfast, Wade Irish Porcelain and one of the finest collections of First Period and Second Period Belleek porcelain. The Asian collection is a small but important element of the ceramic collection that puts the European pieces into context. This collection ranges from stoneware of the Yuan Dynasty (1279-1368) through to early 20th century Japanese porcelain. The Ulster Museum, from 1982, pioneered a contemporary collecting policy within the ceramic field. As the only public collection of international contemporary ceramics in Ireland, it continues to form an extensive, comprehensive and inspiring record of the work of ceramic artists.

The glass collection consists of mainly two areas. Firstly, the historic collection, which is made up of mainly English and Irish 18th and 19th-century glass. A highlight of this section is the group of 350 drinking glasses showing the development of such wares since the last quarter of the 17th century. There is, too, a comprehensive collection of decanters including many rare marked Irish pieces. Ireland was an important glass manufacturing region in Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries and the collection reflects this. Each of the Irish factories is represented. Without doubt the most important piece in the Irish glass collection is the bowl and stand that was once owned by the Marquis of Bute. As one of the most spectacular pieces of Irish glass ever made it has no comparison in any public collection in Britain or Ireland. As with the ceramics collection, the Ulster Museum was innovative in its policy of collecting contemporary glass and this collection is unique in Ireland. With over 100 artworks, it is an internationally important collection that continues to chart new movements within the glass medium. The most significant work in the international contemporary glass collection is Azure Ice Crystal Sconce by Dale Chihuly, which is made up of elements cut at the Waterford Glass Factory.

The jewellery collection is, except for recent contemporary acquisitions, almost exclusively the gift of Mrs Anne Hull Grundy, art and jewellery historian, who had Northern Irish conn

Address: 153 Bangor Rd, Cultra, Holywood, Northern Ireland, BT18 0EU, United Kingdom
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