Great space . . . . . . but what about the art

Despite its recent achievements and continuing popularity, the National Gallery is not fulfilling its potential, argues Aidan Dunne, Art Critic

The National Gallery of Ireland was established by an act of parliament 150 years ago this August, and first opened its doors to the public 10 years later, early in 1864. Its establishment is currently celebrated in a documentary exhibition in the gallery's handsome, state-of-the-art print rooms, just one of the significant advances in the gallery's facilities, both on the surface and behind the scenes, over the last decade and more. During that time we've seen substantial refurbishment and enhancement of existing sections of the Merrion Square complex and, of course, the highlight, the jewel in the gallery's crown, was the opening of the Millennium Wing, the Clare Street extension, in January 2001.

Its 150th birthday is as good a time as any to look at the current state of an institution that has enjoyed exceptional popularity with the public over the years, particularly during and since the directorship of the late James White, who did a great deal to make it an open, welcoming place. But Dubliners have always displayed a fondness for "their" galleries, the National and, on the opposite side of the river, the Hugh Lane Municipal Gallery.

From the point of view of attracting visitors from elsewhere in Ireland and abroad, the National Gallery is ideally situated in the centre of town. The improvements mentioned above have added to its appeal, and such innovations as the advent of the Yeats Room, not as yet all that it should be, provided it with another strong draw. There is an enormous amount of interest in Jack B. Yeats and the Yeats family in general. The Gallery Shop, always good, has been expanded imaginatively in the Millennium Wing. The restaurant has also been allocated a huge amount - perhaps an inordinately huge amount - of space there. Another innovation is the ESB Centre for the Study of Irish Art. So, one might well think, everything in the garden is rosy.

Yet it has to be said that in at least some respects the gallery has not lived up to its potential. Specifically, the programming of temporary exhibitions in the much- vaunted new galleries in the Millennium Wing has been disappointing, to say the least, all the more so given the controversial decision to introduce admission charges to temporary exhibitions. At a time when arts institutions are under increasing pressure to identify alternative sources of revenue, the case for admission charges to temporary exhibitions is perfectly reasonable, so long as you have the exhibitions to justify the charges.

The Millennium Wing opened with an exhibition of work by the French Impressionists. The very word "Impressionist" works a kind of magic on the public, something appreciated some years ago when the gallery packaged Julian Campbell's ground-breaking exhibition featuring Irish artists in France as The Irish Impressionists. But whatever doubts one had about the title in that case - there were hardly any Irish Impressionists to speak of - there was no doubting the extraordinary amount of original research and discovery that had gone into the exhibition. It was quite simply an unmissable show for anyone who cared about Irish art.

The inaugural exhibition in the Millennium Wing, on the other hand, came en masse from the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and, while passable enough, failed to recognise one simple fact: Irish people travel. They have been travelling abroad and visiting galleries for a long time now, and an hour in the Musée D'Orsay in Paris, to mention but one obvious example, would yield myriad examples of Impressionist paintings that vastly overshadow what was on view in Dublin. You could say that the gallery got away with its show on the strength of the Impressionist tag, but it was neither a major exhibition nor a particularly auspicious beginning.

At the time, hanging in the galleries below the Impressionists was a selection of 20th-century Irish work (much of it borrowed to cover gaps in the gallery's collection), which broached a vital aspect of the gallery's area of interest - Irish art up to the mid-20th century - that has been too little advanced or explored since in terms of its exhibition programme.

It is also true that these initial exhibitions exposed the limitations of the new galleries. It is only fair to point out that the gallery's extension, by Benson and Forsyth, opened to almost universal acclaim, and that the company's considerably amended design had to take account of severe restrictions relating to the preservation of 5 Clare Street. Yet it quickly became clear that, whatever its merits as an architectural statement, as a functioning gallery space the wing does have significant limitations, presumably because the revisions had their most severe impact on the exhibition areas of the design.

There is, for one thing, the odd sensation that, while space is generously apportioned elsewhere in the structure, the provision of actual gallery space is miserly.

Then the temporary exhibition galleries are emphatically divided, with a vast gulf between them. A sequence of smaller galleries and a corridor are separated from one larger, slightly awkward space. This space is accessible by corridor, but it is also linked to the sequence of rooms by a dramatic bridge that serves to emphasise its separation. Making one's way down through the sequence of smaller galleries into a jumble of corridors and angles, there is a curious sense of coming to a dead end. The walls throughout, incidentally, have a distinctive, raw plaster finish, which must pose problems in terms of maintenance.

Regarded purely as an exhibition venue, the Millennium Wing is not all that it might have been. Even so, it is capable of hosting substantial shows. The problem is that those shows have not really materialised. A low point has to be last summer's Louis Ducros exhibition. Director Raymond Keaveney seemed to anticipate a certain scepticism when he referred, in his catalogue introduction, to the need to alternate works by the great masters "admired by all", with exhibitions by "lesser-known talents". But the problem is emphatically not familiarity, or the lack of it. One can readily envisage fascinating exhibitions by lesser-known talents, but siting a great deal of fairly dull work in a prime exhibition space throughout the summer and charging people money to see it hardly qualifies.

One rather suspected that it was there because it was convenient: it was a travelling exhibition and it came as a package - a recurrent theme. This is not to disparage the hapless Ducros, incidentally, whose work might have made an interesting sideshow to some other main event. But, as it was, judged as a piece of programming, it was simply inexplicable.

This summer's show, of still-lifes by the 18th-century Spanish painter, Luis Meléndez, is also vulnerable to criticism on similar grounds. As far as it goes, the Meléndez is a good exhibition, worthy of attention, and it bears the marks of curatorial expertise, with excellent documentation. But there is, to put it mildly, a certain limited sameness to Meléndez's work. Even the curator, Dr Peter Cherry, observes that the artist ended up making his career at something that was a fallback for him, and felt consistently thwarted and unfulfilled in his ambitions. Even more so in this case, the problem is not the exhibition itself, which has considerable virtues, but the job it is expected to do, the particular space and time it occupies in terms of programming for the gallery.

Unfortunately, similar criticisms can be levelled at other shows. American Beauty was a disappointing survey of American art. It had the bad luck to overlap with the Tate Gallery's eye-opening American Sublime and it looked third-rate by comparison.

There was much to admire in the Jules Breton show, but at the same time Breton's virtues, which on the whole come under the heading of worthy but dull, were never going to inspire a great public reaction.

The same epithet, worthy but dull, could be applied to this year's New Frontiers, a show that was at least genuinely informative, highlighting work from the national collections of the EU accession states.

Among the better shows one could number last autumn's Love Letters, an exploration of the theme of the letter in 17th-century Dutch genre painting, which used multiple sources for the work on view and which leaned heavily on the strength of the gallery's own Beit paintings as leverage to bring in other works. While it was an obvious thing to do, there is also a case to be made for the Paul Henry retrospective shown early last year, though in the event it displayed his limitations as much as his strengths.

Yet there seems to be so much that the gallery is not doing. The Paul Henry is all very well, but what of exploring Irish art further? Surely there is real scope for monograph exhibitions focusing on individual Irish artists? What of links with historians and researchers, links that nourish original exhibition projects? What of developing a network of partnerships and reciprocal arrangements with galleries abroad? Maybe these things are happening, but there is no real sign of it.

The odd thing is that anyone who is familiar with the gallery over a period of time will know that its staff includes a wealth of immensely talented, dedicated, knowledgeable and committed individuals at senior levels. In their various areas, for example, Marie Bourke, Fionnuala Croke, Sergio Benedetti, Andrew O'Connor, Valerie Keogh, and many others, all work wonders.

Director Raymond Keaveney was exemplary in shepherding the hugely complex and difficult Millennium Wing project.

All have proven abilities on an individual level in various contexts. But it must be said that, for whatever reasons, the formidable reserves of talent and expertise at the gallery are not being adequately reflected in terms of the exhibitions we are seeing there. This is not to denigrate the considerable infrastructural and other improvements over the last number of years, rather to point out that whatever programming structure currently pertains is not really working. Exhibition programming, and everything that feeds into it, is simply too important to be neglected for long, and nowadays programming is a strategic, long-term art.

A Plain Structure Firmly Built is at The Print Gallery, National Gallery of Ireland, until September 12th (tel: 01- 6633513)