Forging A Future For The Great Hunger Museum

By Ellen Russell Beatty
Ponder This

Ellen Russell Beatty

Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum (Museam An Ghorta Mhoir) at Quinnipiac University in Hamden is home to the world’s largest collection of visual art, artifacts and printed materials relating to the Irish famine.

A unique and primary success of the hunger museum has been as a gallery. It houses artistic, works of the 19th century as well as contemporary examples of visual art, including drawings and more recently added video productions.

Luke Gibbons of the National University of Ireland, Maynooth says that “artists should be as central to commemoration as historians.” The Quinnipiac University Museum excels as an exhibit of artistic expression of history. It tells a visual story of the famine, the governmental neglect, the great migration and quest for equality and justice.

The Great Hunger Museum contains a fully searchable online database of holdings and contemporary reporting on the Great Hunger. This is the largest repository located worldwide and is free to anyone to access at ighm.org.

Finton O’Toole, writing in the Irish Times, said that the way to get people to engage with important aspects of their history is to trust them with the actual materials out of which history is written and represented. None does it better than the Great Hunger Museum. Coupled with the extensive online collection, the exhibits now serve as an exemplary model for all those seeking to engage in the difficult task of finding truth in history.

This factual summary only serves to make the recent news of the permanent closure of the museum so difficult to comprehend. The mission of the museum is to educate all audiences about the underlying political, social, economic and historic causes of the Great Hunger. To view the museum as a monument to the Irish famine would be to diminish the fundamental purpose. The level of research and scholarship that has been published by the museum is remarkable.

My association with history and Irish history in particular has changed my worldview in positive and significant ways. Correct knowledge has been liberating, providing a sense of empathy for the human condition so important in my work as a clinician, educator and community member. My appreciation of the tragedy of human suffering has brought understanding, perspective and forgiveness. The opportunity to learn history has also heightened my sense of responsibility and determination to seek out and improve injustice, inequality and tyranny.

We are adult enough to handle the truth about our history. The museum highlights that all history emerges with omissions. How does the past come to us? What we see and what we don’t see in the historical record is important. Who controls access to the past? These are important questions that can support us in our own political times. Art, literature, research and intellectual actions help to reclaim the rightful and full history, even if it is unflattering to influential others. This is a powerful lesson as we struggle with our own American truth that includes racism, inequality and the resultant legacy of continued denial of opportunity for some.

The story of the Great Hunger Museum is of people fleeing violence and starvation, hoping for a better life but encountering hostility when they arrived here. This epic Irish story parallels what is happening today among various peoples and geographical areas around the world.

The British redefined everything including language, culture, faith, education and law according to their own definitions and parameters. Are we to allow a president of a private university in our state to disavow such an important history?

The Irish experience represents a coupling of economic theory with racial prejudice During the famine, evictions occurred in an ideological context. There existed in 1847-52 relentless racial stereotyping, which affected British attitudes toward the use of public funds to help victims of famine across the Irish Sea. This may reflect current world situations and even our own domestic views

The permanent closure represents a deliberate lack of support as a predetermined strategy by president Judy D. Olian and supported by the chairperson of the Board of Trustees. To some people it seems clear that the current president of Quinnipiac University was sought after to bring this predetermined decision to fruition. Budgetary concerns explaining the closure simply do not hold up to scrutiny. The recent decision represents total disregard for the Irish diaspora in the United States and the scholarly history and research underpinning the museum exhibit.

Corporate higher education has run amok. Shame on the Quinnipiac University administration, which has acquiesced to this decision.

Pleas from Irish American organizations from around the state as far back as 2019 to keep the hunger museum alive were met with indifference. Ideas were proposed for the exhibit to serve as a permanent acknowledgement of all genocide and oppression worldwide. This represented an important opportunity to feature ongoing exhibits of human rights violations of persons of color across all cultures, including Native Americans and other indigenous groups.

Students are certainly interested in learning about the eradication of language, culture, music, faith and customs as oppressive assaults by those in power. The museum with its impressive degree of research is a treasure chest of knowledge about the forces of racism, classism and economic free trade that have excluded certain individuals and groups. Isn’t this the current crisis in American affairs? Why not capitalize and further this shared knowledge for the good of all?

At the very least, the museum closure is an unnecessary misstep in public relations that might easily have been avoided. I have read some of Olian’s writings and I believe her commitment to equity, diversity and justice is genuine. She certainly has the credentials, background and education to appreciate what is at stake. Why then be unable to rethink a position? Is it that her determination has blinded her from facing an error in judgement?

Financial considerations are a red herring in this decision. The museum building is paid for and the revenue stream to self-sufficiency is attainable given a feasible time frame.

The Irish Historical Round Table, a local organization of people interested in Irish history and culture, requested and was denied an audience with Olian. This was early on in 2019, when rumors of closure emerged. Our purpose was to offer ideas, suggestions, background and history about the museum. Our broad connection to the Irish American community might have proved helpful. Olian had publicly stated efforts to support vigorous discussions among students and the community around viewpoints of disagreement. This has not been our experience.

I have been interested and working on this issue since 2019. It took me until today to ask myself: Why are we still spending any time, energy and human capacity trying to convince Quinnipiac University of the inherent value of the museum to academia and to the students of today? Why leave it to Olian to decide how the collection is to be disseminated, purchased, merged or stored, as if the collection belonged only to Quinnipiac?

Let’s open the discussion to the broader community of scholars and interested parties. Can another university or institution create a home for this valuable asset? An important principle when leading change is to ignore resistance rather than risk wasting resources on the pathological need to agree. For whatever reasons, the university does not want the Great Hunger Museum.

When our group representing the Irish Historical Round Table did not have the opportunity to meet with the president, we began to brainstorm. Perhaps she doesn’t understand that we wish to help with fundraising? Perhaps she thinks that the museum is only about Ireland and does not comprehend or appreciate the larger lessons of social justice, equity and protection of human rights? How is the president missing the extraordinary opportunity for students to engage with the scholarship of oppression? Why wouldn’t she explore ideas for museum viability with influential and caring others?

It never occurred to us that this was a fait accompli even when she flatly refused to appoint an advisory committee made of volunteer representatives from various Irish organizations. We were slow to realize that her unusual opposition to civil dialogue stemmed from a predetermined and unwavering decision. Olian was arrogant, impervious and unwilling to dialogue. What made us think that the outcome would change?

It is time for a more creative and positive approach. Perhaps the closure can be a clarion call to the broader Irish American community to protect the heritage that can so inform us now and in the future. The disdain must be met with parallel indifference, but also with a positive focus on solutions.

I, for one, would welcome the opportunity to join with informed others to find a safe haven for the important scholarship and collection of the Museum An Ghorta Mhoir.

Dr. Ellen Russell Beatty served seven years as Associate Vice President of Academic Affairs at Southern Connecticut State University, and also served as interim Academic Vice president, Dean of Health & Human Services and Director of Faculty Development. In addition to the broad perspective and a multitude of skills required of high-level administrators, her areas of special expertise lie in strategic planning, accreditation, assessment and planning and budgetary allocation.