Art gallery unveils itself - with new name and extension

So many people turned up for the official opening of the Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane's new extension last night that they were still arriving long after the speeches were over.

An estimated 1,000 invited guests came through the doors, many of them carrying dripping umbrellas which the gallery staff eyed nervously.

The wet umbrellas were appropriate last night, since one of the gallery's most famous paintings bequeathed by Hugh Lane, Renoir's Les Parapluies, was on display in Dublin again.

Renoir's masterpiece is one of eight Impressionist paintings that have rotated between Dublin and London's National Gallery since they were bequeathed by Hugh Lane in 1913.

For the first time since then, all eight paintings are now temporarily being exhibited together in Dublin. They include two Manets, and one painting each by Monet, Degas, Pisarro, Vuillard and Morisot.

Renamed from the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery of Art to its present new mouthful, the Dublin City Gallery the Hugh Lane, the gallery's exhibition space has now doubled in space to 4,000sq m. Its impressive and airy €13 million expansion was designed by architects Gilroy McMahon.

Last night, the area attracting most visitors was the new Seán Scully room, which contains eight paintings donated to the gallery by the world-famous painter of abstracts. "He is one of the greatest artists of his generation," Barbara Dawson, the gallery's director, declared during her speech.

Scully himself, who had travelled from Munich for the opening, was looking not at the art on the walls, but at the books in the new bookshop.

"It's something we did by working together," he said, speaking of his donation to the gallery. He had seen the room, lit solely by natural light, for the first time only the previous day: "It's naturally lit from above - that is, when the dark skies of Dublin allow the light through," he said, as the rain hammered down. His own favourite piece of work in the gallery, he disclosed, is Les Parapluies.

Sharing the speeches with Ms Dawson were the outgoing Dublin city manager, John Fitzgerald; Ann Reihill, chairwoman of the gallery's board; and Lord Mayor Catherine Byrne.

"I would urge as many Dubliners and visitors to come and see the Lane bequest paintings, while they are all here in Dublin," Cllr Byrne said.

Prior to the closing of the gallery, it was attracting some 60,000 visitors a year. "We hope to see 100,000 a year now," Ms Dawson declared.

Details of one of the newly opened gallery's first big projects were announced last night. In partnership with the Irish Museum of Modern Art, the gallery will be installing 20 of Welsh-born sculptor Barry Flanagan's trademark giant hares throughout central Dublin.

The first one will be at O'Connell Bridge, and the other 19 will make a line of "hops", with the last hare ending up in the gallery itself.

Among the many distinguished artists present for the reopening of the gallery were Anne Madden, Felim Egan, Patrick Scott, Patrick Ireland, Brian Maguire and Jaki Irvine.