Curator with particular view on art world BT Declan McGonagle and IMMA

In many respects the Irish Museum of Modern Art has been synonymous with Declan McGonagle, its first, so far only and currently…

In many respects the Irish Museum of Modern Art has been synonymous with Declan McGonagle, its first, so far only and currently embattled director, and the man who has put his stamp on the institution from its beginnings in 1991.

It was McGonagle who seized on the character of the Royal Hospital Kilmainham as providing an ideal location for a new kind of museum. When opinion was divided as to its suitability for the job, given the existence of a potential alternative in the form of the Crimea Banqueting Hall on the International Financial Services Centre site, he was an enthusiastic advocate for Kilmainham.

His argument was that the large central docklands space seemed to presuppose one kind of contemporary art in a particular kind of institution, whereas Kilmainham, with its sequences of domestic-scaled rooms, its myriad outbuildings, courtyard and extensive grounds, offered a chance to redefine the nature and role of the museum. And this at an opportune time, when there was much excited speculation about a post-modern dispersal of authority and everything seemed up for grabs.

Rather than being a conventional repository of a fixed, canonical collection on permanent display, he proposed that the museum feature a constantly shifting exploration of past and present through temporary displays drawn from both its own and visiting collections. He felt that artists were people who worked within and were shaped by communities, and saw it as important that IMMA should be local and international simultaneously. While scathing about "community art", which he saw as essentially patronising, he believed the job of the museum was to bring the best contemporary art to the community.

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By and large IMMA has done all of these things. It has both an international reputation and a successful programme of community involvement. A large part of its importance is that it is there, and efficiently run. It's been a focal point for contemporary art within Ireland and, perhaps even more significantly, from the outside looking in. It's a landmark for the international arts community, a first port of call and an essential element in raising the profile of Irish art.

Of course, everything in the garden has not been rosy. McGonagle established his curatorial reputation at the Orchard Gallery in Derry by bringing in heavyweights in the international art world and involving them in projects with local resonance.

Given the charged political climate, which actually helped to attract artists, the circumstances were ideally suited to his preference for a hybridised form of art that came close to the continuation of sociology by other means.

To a large extent he brought the same philosophy to IMMA. But it is fair to say that the guerrilla-style interventions that created a stir in Derry did not translate that effectively into the more ponderous, large-scale museum setting.

Two major events, "From Beyond the Pale" and "The Event Horizon", didn't succeed in creating anything like the buzz, or the attendances, that they might have. It was left to more conventional ideas, such as the Andy Warhol show, to bring in the punters.

There is a certain inevitability to the fact that, among Irish artists, outside of a particular circle, the response to IMMA has tended to be muted and often quite critical. Yet any debate has tended to deteriorate, by the time it percolates through to the media, to the old isn't-modern art-all-rubbish row.

The fact is that not alone can IMMA never hope to please everyone, but that as a national museum it addresses, on the one hand, artists and a public attuned to an international context, and, on the other, those who tend to favour more traditional forms and styles.

Running an institution of the scale and complexity of IMMA requires an enormous commitment of energy and McGonagle has been a hugely energetic presence. He has also developed in the job. An early defensiveness and an apparent reluctance to delegate has moderated into a relatively more open approach.

But by international standards, 10 years is quite a long time in such a position. With a few exceptions, such as the Tate supremo Sir Nicholas Serota, curators tend to move on. Perhaps part of the problem is that IMMA is unique in Ireland. There is simply no comparable institution to attract McGonagle which, given his reported reluctance to settle abroad (a spell at the ICA in London was succeeded by a return to Derry) narrows his options. But as one fellow curator observed, he is someone who is more than capable of creating a role for himself should he choose to return to Northern Ireland.

He has never pretended to be a fan of the glitz and glitter of the rarefied international art circuit. His ambivalent position in relation to the art world per se is encapsulated in one observation about him.

Towards the end of his tenure at the Orchard, I happened to visit an exhibition of paintings in a Belfast gallery. It seemed to me the kind of show that might travel to the Orchard, even though McGonagle was reputedly antipathetic to painting generally. Had Declan seen it, I asked the curator.

He smiled in reply. Declan had never even been in the gallery, he explained. I heard he wasn't really interested in painting, I said, but that seemed extraordinary.

No, no, said the curator. It's not that he's not really interested. He's more interested in certain things that have to do with art.

For him the debate about art is always a debate about society.