I USED TO work in finance and worked here as a volunteer tour guide at the weekends. I’ve always been fascinated by the collection and, when I saw this job advertised, I gave up my day job to do it.
We have more than 400 members now. They are a very broad range of people who share a great enthusiasm for the collection. They pay €50 a year and for that get to come to all the social and cultural events that it is my job to organise.
At the moment I’m putting the final touches to Members’ Week, for which I’m organising a number of Asian-themed events.
I'm also working on the launch of our Members' Book Club next spring. It will include works such as the Shahnama, or Book of Kings, the Iranian national epic. Each book the club chooses will have an Asian theme and the idea is to bring the collection to life.
I start at 9am, coming in on the bus from Bray. I’ll check e-mails and the post and then, very often, I’ll head out to meet with people working in other cultural organisations with a view to organising a visit or a talk for our members.
We recently went to Dublin Zoo to visit the elephants and talk about conservation. Elephants are important to us because we have loads in our exhibition.
We’re based in Dublin Castle, in the Clock Tower, and the place is a hive of activity, with people coming and going all the time. I have my own team of volunteers working with me now.
Typically I’ll have subscriptions to process and members to liaise with. Very often they make a suggestion about things they’d like to see and I’ll try and organise it.
We’re off to see the Chinese dragon robe exhibition in the VA, in February, for example, as well as the School of Oriental and African Studies there.
To me the appeal of our collection is that it is just so very different to Western culture. I also find Chester Beatty himself a fascinating character. He was a mining engineer who was a millionaire by the age of 30 and came to Ireland in early 1950, leaving his collection to the State in 1968.
For lunch I’ll head to our Silk Road Cafe, which has food from all over the world. We also have a rooftop garden on the third floor, so if the weather’s nice I’ll pop up there for a bit.
We close up at 5pm and I’ll head home. Two or three evenings a month, however, we have a members’ event on, such as a behind-the-scenes tour of the gallery. They’re a very sociable bunch, so those nights are much later, but great fun.
Mary Dowling is membership co-ordinator for the Chester Beatty Library