Claire Walsh
Curator (Old College Project)
Background
I am a curator and researcher from Ireland, who works with archives and collections to develop exhibitions, commissions and public programmes. My work focuses on dialogues between contemporary art practice and historic and contemporary forms of colonialism, imperialism and ecological extraction.
In July 2024, I was appointed as Curator of the Old College Project at the University of Edinburgh. I have held previous positions as Art Collections Curator at the University of Edinburgh (maternity cover) and curatorial roles at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (on career break since 2023); the National Galleries of Scotland, Edinburgh; MAP Magazine, Glasgow/Edinburgh, and Occupy Space, Limerick.
I have led on and co-curated several exhibitions and events that examine how legacies of colonialism and imperialism continue to inhabit the present. These include The Anthropocene (Irish Museum of Modern Art, 2022), which looked at the colonial origins of museums and how its legacies of classification and extraction continue to shape dominant understandings of our world and Ghosts From the Recent Past (IMMA, 2021), a large-scale exhibition of artworks from the IMMA collection, that represent events from recent histories across the world – including in Ireland, Serbia, Monserrat, St Lucia, USA, Iraq, England, Mexico and Italy – that reverberate in (or haunt) the present.
My research interests include the role of collecting institutions in articulating ideas of national and diasporic identity; the museum and the Anthropocene; contested heritage in museums and the built environment; chrono-politics (the politics of time) and the museum; and artists working with archives.
I have over a decade of museum experience, including on public engagement, acquisitions, commissions, policy-writing, provenance research, preservation and documentation.
Project activity
Selected exhibitions and public programming:
Co-producer (w/ Dr. Yashaswini Chandra and Prof. Roger Jeffrey): Uncover: Exploring South Asian Artworks across the Collections, pp. 35-36: [https://library.ed.ac.uk/sites/default/files/2024-10/ReConnect%202024%20Annual%20Report.pdf], Re:Connect 2024, Heritage Collections, University of Edinburgh.
Co-selector (w/ Olivia Laumenech, Prof. Tessa Giblin and Anna Hawkins): 2023 University of Edinburgh Art Collection Graduate Show Purchase Prize (awarded to Tanatsei Gambura, Ammna Sheikh and Ffion Williams) (2023).
Lead curator: The Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now: The Anthropocene at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2021-22).
Co-curator (w/ Dublin Digital Radio and Sophie Byrne): The Anthropocene – More-than-human, a series of talks, music, art and performance: Edy Fung, Osaro, Aisling Ór Ní Aodha and Colm Keady-Tabbal, IMMA (2022).
Co-curator (w/ Janice Hough and Rachel Gilbourne): Ghosts From the Recent Past (2020-21).
Producer: IMMA Screen online series of film and video works from the collection (2020).
Co-producer (w/ Alice Butler, Daniel Fitzpatrick and Sophie Byrne): Archives Live - Artists working with archives: Helen Cammock, Onyeka Igwe and Frank Sweeney online series with aemi (2020).
Curator: A Fiction Close to Reality: Nalini Malani, Caroline McCarthy, Dennis Oppenheim, Mary Farl Powers, Betsabeé Romero and Richard Wentworth, with loans by Bassam Al-Sabah and Geta Brătescu, IMMA (2019).
Co-curator: IMMA Archive: 1990s – From the Edge to the Centre, IMMA (2019).
Curator: Janet Mullarney Retrospective, IMMA (2018).
Curatorial Assistant: Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2017).
Curator (with Kirstie Meehan, Stephanie Mann and Glasgow Women's Library): Call & Response: Women in Surrealism, Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art (2017).
Guest Co-Editor (w/ Suzanne van der Lingen): Footnoting the Archive, year-long programme of commissions, MAP Magazine (2016).
Assistant Curator: Surreal Encounters: Collecting the Marvellous, travelling exhibition: National Galleries of Scotland, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg (2016).
Curatorial Assistant: ‘Artist Rooms: Roy Lichtenstein’, National Galleries of Scotland (2015).
Selected publications:
Walsh, Claire & Castriota, Brian, ‘In the Shadow of the State: Collecting performance at IMMA and institutions of care in the Irish context’, in Performance: The Ethics and the Politics of Conservation and Care, Volume I, Routledge. (Hölling, H.B., Feldman, J.P., & Magnin, E. (Eds.), 2023. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003309987
Catalogue essay, collections and the Anthropocene ‘Narrow Gate of the Here-and-Now’ (2022).
Glitch Feminism and the work of Bassam Al-Sabah, aemi online (2022)
Reviews published in various journals, including Mousse, MAP Magazine and Paper Visual Art (2016-2022).
Contributor to several catalogues published by the National Galleries of Scotland, including Modern Scottish Women: Painters and Sculptors 1885-1965; Joan Eardley: A Sense of Place and Surreal Encounters (2014-17).