Organization Rallies To Save Irish Famine Museum

There’s a statue by sculptor Glenna Goodacre in the entryway to Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum on Whitney Avenue in Hamden that captures the desperation of people fleeing the famine of 1845 to 1852, yet only hints at the horrors they were fleeing, or the struggles they faced ahead. ​“She has a bag she’s carrying that has all her worldly possessions,” explained Joseph McDonagh, a representative of the nascent nonprofit Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, who was a docent at the museum before it closed in March 2020 due to the pandemic. ​“She used to be upstairs, but then they brought her down” to welcome visitors in — and give them a chance to brace themselves for what was coming.

As the name of the organization implies, The Great Hunger Museum itself — possibly the world’s largest collection of art related to the Irish famine — currently has an uncertain future. With months of rallies under its belt, a groundswell of support, and connections made to state and local officials, Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum has a proposal to keep the museum, and the artwork it contains, where it is.

As the New York Times reported in November, Quinnipiac University, which owns the museum, closed the museum’s doors due to the pandemic in March 2020. The university announced that it was closing the museum permanently in August 2021, letting the museum’s three staff members go. The university stated at the time that ​“the lack of support at its current location has created an unsustainable operation requiring millions in university funds to be spent on keeping the museum open; funds that could have otherwise been spent on academics and student programs over the years.” 

The New York Times reported that the museum averaged fewer than 20 visitors a day before the pandemic. But the museum did garner attention in the New Haven area and elsewhere, getting press in Boston, New York, and Ireland. A traveling exhibit of the artworks received 110,000 visitors in Ireland. And for McDonagh, the collection’s location in Connecticut, midway between Boston and New York — epicenters of Irish-American culture — was meaningful.

“I used to come three or four times a month,” he said, first as a visitor and then as a docent, to get to know the collection better. He was one of eight or nine docents who volunteered at the museum. In terms of art expertise, McDonagh said, he was ​“a waif” when he started. ​“The reason I got chosen is that I’m Irish.” His parents were both born in Ireland; his father emigrated to the United States in 1930 and his mother in 1938. 

“The experience of being an immigrant is close to me,” McDonagh said. Although his parents weren’t fleeing famine, they did emigrate for the same fundamental reason: ​“There was little opportunity left for them” in Ireland, and they came to America ​“because the streets were paved with gold,” he said with a chuckle. But ​“when my mother came here, she didn’t know if she would see anybody again” in her family. (His mother, who arrived in the United States with a third-grade education, ended up becoming a domestic servant to the family of James Michael Curley, one of the most beloved and also possibly the ​“most corrupt mayor in Boston history,” McDonagh said.) 

McDonagh’s connection to the museum points to the wider impact of the art. ​“The museum is not just about the Great Hunger. It’s about its impact on Ireland and on America,” he said. 

The Great Hunger, it is estimated, killed about a million people in Ireland by the time it was over. Another two million more emigrated during its worst years. Today, McDonagh pointed out, the population of Ireland is still smaller than it was in 1845. As the museum amply details, the biological cause of the famine was a potato blight that caused widespread crop failure. But starvation was hastened by colonial British policies that continued to export food from Ireland even as shortages appeared; as the museum’s website details, ​“up to 75 percent of Irish soil was devoted to wheat, oats, barley and other crops that were grown for export and shipped abroad while the people starved.” Emigration across the Atlantic was a harrowing journey on what came to be known as ​“coffin ships.” In 1847, at the height of the famine, over 17,000 people died during the voyage. But far more made it; ​“today more than 40 million Americans, or roughly 15 percent of the population in the United States, claim Irish ancestry,” the museum’s website states, with an indelible effect on everything from the labor movement to politics to culture.

The artwork in the museum humanizes the famine and the struggles of immigration in ways historical records of it, the bare facts and figures, can’t. First it shows, in raw detail, some of the effects of hunger, to the point that students from QU’s medical school would visit there to observe how starvation might present itself. Perhaps most affecting is a bronze sculpture modeled from an artist’s drawing of a starving family made at the time of the famine. The mother’s name was Bridget O’Donnell. ​“We have no idea what happened to her,” McDonagh said.

Other pieces portray the experience of flight, of forced migration. Among the figures in Margaret Lyster Chamberlain’s The Leave-Taking is a man kneeling, ​“a fellow reaching for some soil,” McDonagh said, ​“as though to take it with him.” He recalled bringing an acquaintance, an immigrant from Jamaica, to see the museum. The acquaintance ​“had to walk away, because he got too emotional,” McDonagh said. ​“That sculpture told his own story.”

The power of the art — and the continued strength of the Irish community locally, in the United States, and back in Ireland — helps explain why Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum has found footing. 

“Word got out the museum was going to be permanently shuttered and I just got pissed off, frankly,” McDonagh said with a smile. Op-eds from Turlough McConnell, the effort’s leader, and McDonagh brought attention to the cause. Several rallies were staged at the museum throughout the fall, garnering support from Sen. Richard Blumenthal, Sen. Chris Murphy, Rep. Rosa DeLauro, and a host of state and local representatives, and drawing attention from Irish officials as well. The organization was incorporated in November and is currently applying for 501(c)3 status. Its Facebook page has over 2,500 members.

The group is pushing to keep the art housed in its current building, which includes not only spacious galleries for the artwork, but a section devoted to replicating the feeling of being in steerage during the Atlantic crossing. ​“The building itself is part of the collection,” McDonagh said. Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum proposes that it could begin its work by assuming responsibility for reopening the museum and maintaining the collection. Over a period of years, it would then expand its programming and assume responsibility for the collection and the building itself. The organization estimates that it could proceed toward these goals for the next five years for under $300,000 a year, raised through state and local funds, corporate sponsorship, private donations, admissions to the museum, and fundraising events.

For its part, Quinnipiac University stated in November that it wasn’t planning on selling the collection and was looking for another institution that might be able to display it. On Tuesday, John Morgan, associate vice president for public relations at QU, updated the university’s position. ​“University officials recently met with representatives from Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum,” he wrote. ​“The university has been engaged in productive conversations with several different potential partners and is making progress with respect to the IGHM collection and ensuring it remains accessible to the broad public and continues to promote the vital story and learnings of the Great Hunger.”

Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum would like to see the building at least reopened to the public by March 17, St. Patrick’s Day. To explain why, McDonagh echoed the sentiments of Sen. Blumenthal at a rally for the museum in October. 

“At this time, when we have refugees from across the globe, you can’t close a museum that is telling the story — and telling the story that you can survive it,” he said. This year marks the museum’s 10th anniversary and the 125th anniversary of the height of the famine.

“I want to walk back in that door,” McDonagh said. ​“I want to say hello to that mother and her children.”

Visit Save Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum’s Facebook page to learn more about its activities.