A special opening night

Cork 2005: 'And the long-awaited day has come": Professor Emeritus John A. Murphy quoted Virgil at the opening last week of the City Museum's €4 million extension.

The red-brick suite of galleries with windows facing onto the river was designed by the then City Architect Neil Hegarty, but remained unfurnished, and therefore unusable, for several years.

With the arrival of Cork 2005 "sheer shame" made its opening imperative, according to Murphy who, as Chairman of the Museum Advisory Committee, recalled the many months when it looked as if no more would be required of his colleagues than to hold the hand of curator Sella Cherry - "figuratively speaking, of course" - through a saga of endless postponements. Yet her professionalism and her stature as a curator had maintained the pressure which rescued the museum from its Cinderella status.

Now open to the public, the new exhibition halls are showing the up-graded resident collection along with The Magic of Masks and Puppets (left) from Scotland, the display from the Cork International Exhibition of 1902, and the public restoration by Jason Ellis of casts from the statuary at St Fin Barre's Cathedral.