Douglas Hyde Gallery

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Since its opening in 1978, the Douglas Hyde Gallery, funded by the Arts Council and Trinity College, has been a significant presence on the Dublin art scene. Designed in a characteristically 1970's style by Paul Koralek, it was created as a purpose-built art space located in the Arts Building of Trinity College. In the early years of its history, the Gallery hosted a wide range of exhibitions, from academic to ethnographic: in the early 1990's, its focus shifted towards contemporary art, placing exhibitions by contemporary Irish artists alongside shows by their international peers.

In recent years, the Gallery has held exhibitions by Christian Boltanski, Louise Bourgeois, Peter Doig, Marlene Dumas, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Gabriel Orozco and Luc Tuymans, and noted Irish artists Dorothy Cross, Michael Mulcahy, Willie Doherty, Patrick Graham, Pat Hall, Kathy Prendergast and Michael Warren.

The gallery produces catalogues and art publications for world-wide distribution, as well as hardbound catalogues for most of the exhibitions held in Gallery 1.

Gallery 2, designed by McCullough-Mulvin architects, opened in 2001. Despite its modest scale, Gallery 2 has played a significant role in the gallery's programme, housing exhibitions by major contemporary artists, as well as occasional exhibitions of craft, textiles and folk art which provide counterpoints to the exhibitions in the main space. This smaller space offers an intimate, contemplative environment for the display of artworks in a variety of media.

In 2005, the Douglas Hyde Gallery initiated its Gallery 3 programme. Gallery 3 does not exist as a permanent physical space. It is a way of describing a network of activities that expand and contextualise the Gallery's main exhibition programme. The Gallery 3 project is intended to fulfill two purposes. Firstly, it connects the exhibitions to wider cultural and social contexts; secondly it brings new audiences into the Gallery and from time to time takes the gallery out to them. Some highlights of the Gallery 3 programme to date have included a series of off-site exhibitions by emerging Irish artists, concerts by internationally renowned musicians such as Cat Power and Sufjan Stevens, and publications that include a monograph on the Swedish artist Hilma af Klint and the reissue on DVD of Bob Quinn's Atlantean trilogy.