Limerick museum could accomodate Covid-19 memorial

THE Hunt Museum chairman believes the garden at its rear should be considered as a remembrance area for those who’ve lost their lives to Covid-19.

John Moran was speaking after a grass-roots campaign launched by the museum saw them hit their target of raising €15,000 for a cobbled area, where people have been invited to donate to have their name – or of a loved one – on a stone, with all the proceeds going to a plan to transform the Hunt garden.

“It's been fabulous. There's been a great response. The interesting thing about this that we had said in our press release is if we were to raise more money, we would continue to invest in the garden,” he said.

HUGE THANKS to the hundreds of you who so generously supported our Cobble Crowdfunding Campaign.

We set out to raise € 15,000 and have exceeded our target to achieve a grand total of € 17,760!

We will keep you all update on the progress of our fabulous Museum in a Garden! pic.twitter.com/B5R870CYH9

— The Hunt Museum (@HuntMuseum) July 10, 2020

Mr Moran said this could leave the prospect of a national memorial to those who have died from coronavirus in Limerick.

“It's difficult to know if it would be 2020 or 2021. But the idea that memorials are commemorations for a national event should automatically be located in the capital just doesn't seem to work with me. There's no reason why it couldn't be somewhere else. There is an obvious connection with [chief medical officer] Dr Tony Holohan having gone to school in Limerick.”

The garden’s location, Mr Moran said, has always struck him as a “gorgeous place for reflection”.

“You really do have that moment where your mind is taken away from the fact you're in the city by a river, with the sound of water and the trees overhead. It seems to be a lovely location to consider doing that,” he said.

Mr Moran, a former secretary general at the Department of Finance, said there need not be any rush over this memorial.

“What we’d want is something to be done very well, cognisant of the fact a lot of people are hurting due to the loss of family members. It needs a similar competition where we would have a really excellent contribution. When they're done well, they can be very effective as a place where people can go. Some people lost loved ones in the period and didn't really have an opportunity to do a grieving that would be expected. Having a place where you can share that sort of grief is a lovely thing to be able to do,” he said.

As part of the transformation of the Hunt Museum’s rear garden, the railings will go. It’s something Mr Moran has been aiming towards for a number of years.

He explained: “When I took over as Hunt Museum chair, it was effectively a new board. There was a changeover, we spoke about the Hunt generally, and its physical structure. There were two things we wanted to do. One, we did, a €1m refurbishment two years ago to address the legacy issues.”

“But the second was the structure of building being surrounded by railings created the wrong impression for a museum which wanted to be open. The railings are not historical, they wouldn't have been there when the building was built. They were put in, I believe at the time they refurbished it to become the Hunt Museum. What we felt was they create a physical barrier to the museum, especially to people who might not be comfortable going into a museum,” Mr Moran said.

Instead, he says the railings should be taken down, with the land opened up like a public park, citing the Museo Nacional del Prado in the Spanish capital of Madrid, or the Metropolitan Museum in the United States of American city of New York.

He also thanked all the people who donated to the Fund a Cobble initiative, saying what’s most pleasing to him is the fact the €15,000 which has been raised was all made up of small individual donations, rather than one huge grant.

Operating from its present location at the Georgian Custom House since 1997, the Hunt Museum was established to house the collection of more than 2,000 works of art and antiquities by John and Gertrude Hunt in their lifetimes.

As antique dealers and advisors to collectors they built a thriving business and also began to acquire pieces that reflected their own interests and curiosity rather than for commercial purposes. The museum re-opened last week after lockdown, with social distancing guidelines in place.