Pride of place for Crawford

Mary Leland profiles the rise and rise of Cork's Crawford Gallery - recently granted status as a national cultural body

Living dangerously is part of the deal at the Crawford Gallery in Cork. Taoiseach Bertie Ahern - guided by Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue - last month announced the gallery's new status as a national institution, which will be implemented next January. The news was accompanied in some quarters by the suggestion that curator Peter Murray had his eyes on the directorship of the National Gallery. This Murray has denied with a characteristically amused, if forceful, dignity.

He applies the same quality to rebuttal of the claim that it was Peter Barry of Barrys Tea who put up the €700,000 that bought back View of Cork by John Butts for the Crawford. Both Barry and Murray deny that allegation. The iconic painting, on loan to the gallery since 1970 and put up for sale two months ago, was bought after Murray took a call from someone he had met only once. "On the basis of that call, I raised my hand at the Lynes and Lynes auction and in an act of faith spent €700,000 of someone else's money."

It was also an act of faith in the Government. A defining feature of the Crawford's new status was the Taoiseach's reminder that the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism "is favourably disposed towards any request that the gallery may make seeking 'approved body' status, to facilitate the donation of a major artwork to the gallery with the benefit of tax relief to the donor".

Not only did this encourage the return of the Butts painting, but it is hoped it will stimulate further gifts and grants. "The benefactor in this case made a collective family decision based on a pride in Cork and an understanding of the value of the painting to the city," says Murray. "We were working with other possible purchasers - there are at least 10 private collectors in the country who routinely would have spent up to €1 million on an 18th-century Irish painting, but I don't know who it would have gone to otherwise."

So Murray has no plans to move to Dublin; Raymond Keaveney is a valued colleague whom he regards as doing an exceptionally fine job at the National Gallery, but even if that were not the case, Murray and his institution are at a long-sought point of professional advancement. "The future is there to be embraced," he says.

From January, the gallery will join the list of national cultural institutions, including IMMA, the National Library and Museum, and the National Concert Hall.

Watching the preparations for the gallery's next big undertaking for Cork 2005, it is difficult to remember what it was like in 1984. A major international conference to mark the 200th anniversary of the death of Cork-born painter James Barry is just one element of the Barry exhibition opening in October, for which nearly 200 items are being assembled from museums, institutions and private galleries in Ireland, Europe and North America. Most of this will never have been seen here before. The exhibition is - much like its subject - a passionate affair, originating in poet Tom McCarthy's enthusiasm for Barry's troubled genius, allied to Murray's commitment to an assessment of a man largely regarded as the most important neo-classical painter of 18th-century Britain.

When Murray, a History of Art graduate from UCD and an M Litt from TCD, came to Cork from Dublin, he found a fine gallery with a fine collection which had been allowed to fade from public view. He announced its resurrection with a Christmas party for which holly and streamers decorated the marble halls, and then got down to the work of identifying and returning loans, retrieving missing items, reducing borrowed works, and publishing an illustrated catalogue of the gallery's history, contents and artists. That process took the first 10 years, coupled as it was with the formulation of an exhibitions programme and acquisitions policy.

The arrival of the Ballymaloe Café was a crucial bonus. Nothing to do with art, but it gets people into the gallery, as does the use of the lecture theatre for concerts and talks.

But visual standards were given an enormous boost by the next 10-year stage. The building of the €2.5 million wing designed by Erik van Egeraat took the red-brick side elevation billowing out onto Half Moon Street and provided an internal two-storey space. Opened in 2000 by the then Minister for Arts Síle de Valera, it allowed more and bigger temporary exhibitions.

This was seen almost immediately in the arrival in 2001 of Picasso works on paper (1896-1934) on loan from the Musée Picasso in Paris; in the more recent Figure and Ground examination of Netherlands art from Rembrandt to Mondriaan with which the Crawford introduced its programme for Cork 2005; and again in the splendid Airgeadóir exhibition of Cork silver.

The Crawford is a major contributor to the programme for Cork 2005, even if not quite to the extent Murray had hoped. A proposal for a biennial of contemporary art in Cork as a lasting Capital of Culture legacy was declined by the Cork 2005 organisation, yet Murray applauds the year as a catalyst. Figure and Ground was not supported (it was funded by Project Management) but it would not have happened, he says, without the spur of the year.

"If we charted the whole year we'd see that while individual grants may have been relatively modest, the effect has been to liberate two or three times their value from other sources, which is the ideal way to operate. While not on the receiving end of limitless 2005 largesse, funding was received for the Irish contemporary showcase C2 at the beginning of the year, €45,000 was received for Airgeadóir and €30,000 for exhibition of maritime paintings at the Port of Cork Customs House. But Airgeadóir, for example, cost about €400,000 to mount, almost all of it coming from the Bowen Group. These costs won't appear in the 2005 books, but the year has challenged the city, and events of that cost and magnitude would not have happened without it."

What will appear in the books will be the €100,000 given to the Barry Exhibition. Even so, this has had to be reduced in scale, and Murray is still looking for a single-name sponsor.

Perhaps the new designation will make identifying such a benefactor a little easier. This is just one of the benefits anticipated by Cllr Máirín Quill, chairwoman of the Crawford board for the past 12 years, who is also looking for some way of enhancing the gallery's acquisitions fund which has remained at €20,000 for most of that time. The Friends of the Crawford Gallery help with finance but the meagre fund has all but disappeared in the stress of the 2005 programme. Quill sees the tax designation as a vital element in the gallery's future role.

The Crawford, originally the city's customs house and then the Royal Cork Institution, becoming a gallery and art school under the patronage of the Crawford brewing family, was most recently administered by and shared with the Cork Vocational Education Committee. Despite the removal of the School of Art and Design to Sharman Crawford Street in 1979, the VEC remained, although it is now relocating to Lavitt's Quay.

"More space, more staff, more realistic opening hours - on Sundays, for example - and more commissions," says Máirín Quill of the new regime, which will also see a new board of directors. She echoes the Taoiseach's recognition of the gallery's cultural position within the country as a whole, and welcomes his assurance that the designation will allow the Crawford to receive the money it will require if it is to continue to play a significant role in national as well as local life.