The new summary Catalogue: drawings, paintings and sculptures (edited by Eileen Black) of the collections of MAGNI, the combined Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland, is a big, solid, lavishly produced publication, densely illustrated with small colour reproductions, and invaluable as a reference. The quality of the production is due to an imaginative piece of sponsorship on the part of fine art printers, Nicholson and Bass.
As big as a telephone directory, the catalogue is as practical, making information on the collections instantly accessible and allowing us to get a flavour of the entire fine art holdings of the various MAGNI institutions. Qualitatively and quantitatively, of course, these holdings are concentrated in the Ulster Museum, though there are interesting adjuncts, such as the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum's extraordinary collection of work by William Conor.
The prolific Conor is also well represented in the Ulster Museum collection. In terms of 20th-century art, it possesses some notable riches, including such well-known highlights as the strong representative range of work by William Scott and Sir John Lavery. It also has some good Roderic O'Conors, and a good sample of work by Paul Henry, including the archetypal Dawn, Killary Harbour. It is home to an enormous number of drawings by Mainie Jellett, plus some pictures, and a lot of drawings and work in other media by the exceptionally popular John Luke.
Predictably enough, perhaps, there is a lot of the - distinctly variable - sculptor F.E. McWilliam, and some fine Basil Blackshaws and Colin Middletons. But less predictably there are also some very good Louis le Brocquys. Add in fine individual pieces by Barrie Cooke (his excellent Big Tench Lake) T.P. Flanagan and David Crone, and it's clear that someone had an eye. Often, though, these artists are not represented in any great depth, which is a pity. As its exhibition, 300 Years of Irish Painting, demonstrated, the museum has some of the key Irish works of the latter half of the 20th century, but not, alas, enough - particularly from more recent years. These key works would certainly include Jack B. Yeats's On Through the Silent Lands, Robert Ballagh's Inside No 3, Gerard Dillon's Yellow Bungalow and Edward Maguire's 1974 portrait of Seamus Heaney.
Overall, while there are the predictable strengths in terms of Northern artists such as Lavery, Scott, Conor and Luke, the collection is undeniably patchy and offers huge scope for improvement, should anyone be willing to take up the challenge. The problem is, of course, that when works were available and affordable the museum didn't have the requisite acquisitions budget. Now any museum, North or South, contemplating the acquisition of 20thcentury Irish art is facing a whole new ball game.
The publication of the summary catalogue comes at a vital stage in the history of the Ulster Museum. In fact we are currently seeing, with luck - and some judgment - the end of a dispirited phase of the museum's history. Cautious moves towards the establishment of an art gallery that would house the fine and applied art collections are one sign of this. The fumbling, hesitant progress of the peace process is a significant external factor. And the on-going, comprehensive reorganisation of the museums and galleries of Northern Ireland is extremely important.
A significant role of the catalogue is that, while only a fraction of a collection can be on view at any one time, on paper it's instantly accessible and instantly checkable. Which rather puts it in the limelight, exposing its strengths and weaknesses. Part of the job is to reflect the culture within which the museum functions, not merely guarding the past, keeping it safe and distant, but applying it to and keeping tabs on the present. As the repository of Northern Ireland's foremost public fine art collection, expectations of the Ulster Museum are obviously high, but then so they should be.
