ArtsScape: In this week's reports that some of the Hunt Museum collection may be art looted by the Nazis (denied by the museum's chairman, George Stacpoole and Hunt family members), mention was given to the friendship between John and Gertrude Hunt and Adolf Mahr, writes Shane Hegarty.
A controversial figure, Mahr was director of the National Museum of Ireland before the second World War, living with his wife and two daughters in Dublin between 1927 and 1939. An Austrian-born archaeologist, he later described himself as "Dublin's Nazi No. 1" and was co-founder and head of the 250-strong Nazi Party in Ireland. He was also responsible for the formation of a local branch of the Hitler Youth, which enjoyed summer camps in Balbriggan, Co Dublin.
He was well regarded and enjoyed a friendship with Éamon de Valera, although later there would be controversy over how much the then taoiseach knew of Mahr's activities.
It has been suggested that Mahr's abrupt return to Germany before the outbreak of the war was because of pressure from Irish intelligence.
During the war, having supplied the German foreign office with a report on Ireland, he was responsible for an Irish radio service in Berlin and was subsequently captured by the Allies, almost dying in an internment camp. Mahr had always claimed that he had left Ireland to attend a conference and had been unable to return because of the war, so was on official leave from the National Museum. He lobbied for a return to the position after the war, but was prevented from doing so after an outcry in the Dáil.
A curious sub-plot involves Mahr's friendship with an Irish Jew, Albert Bender, who left Dublin in 1886 and became a great patron of San Francisco's art scene. Bender contributed to the National Museum to such a degree that the Augusta Bender Memorial Room of Ancient Asian Art, named after Albert's mother, was opened in 1934.
Irish journalist Gerry Mullins discovered correspondence between the two men in California's Mills College, which he subsequently detailed in The Irish Times. Although the two never met, letters between them were warm, with Mahr unhappy on occasions when politics was raised.
"You are not Mr Wilson or Mr Trotzky and I am not Mr Hitler," he told Bender. "Why can we not discuss more pleasant things in which we both take a common and purely human interest?" Mullins wrote of how Mahr's daughters insisted that their father saved several Jews from death and could be politically described as an anti-Semitic, but did not hate Jews individually.
After being officially retired by the Irish government, Adolf Mahr died in Bonn in 1951, aged 64.
Cork's cultural agenda
The publicity campaign for the new Cork School of Music is "on hold" according to cellist and teacher, Gerry Kelly - at least until March 17th, by which time the Taoiseach has promised a decision on the controversially delayed building, writes Mary Leland. News that the EU is relaxing some of its budgetary restraints may bode well for the school, but Kelly says that he's still holding the ballot box in one hand and the cello in the other. Many people in Cork and elsewhere will be glad to hear that. Kelly looks like he has found his vocation and it isn't just music - it's the politics of agitation. Having announced his own engagement in the forthcoming local elections as a cultural candidate, with his campaign based on the struggle to get the Government to keep its promise of a new school of music for Cork, he is now talking about the need for those with a cultural agenda to get involved in the democratic process. A founder member of the 35-year-old National Youth Orchestra and the third generation of a family of professional musicians on both sides, with personal and professional links to musicians throughout the world, he is convinced of the need for a school of music in every county - not just Cork.
But Cork is the issue of the moment, where new a building for the school on Union Quay was an integral element of the pitch made to get the designation of European Capital of Culture 2005 for the city.
A model of the proposed €60 million building was shown to the international jury, the approval of An Bord Pleanála was achieved and the staff and students redistributed themselves around the city. "The fact that we had actually moved out of the old building is a major factor in all this - it shows that we weren't acting on a rash promise, that we thought everything was happening as planned."
But then came the news that the funding of this flagship public/private partnership deal with Jarvis International had fallen between the cracks of Irish and European accounting systems, involving both the departments of Education and of Finance, and is currently stalled at Cabinet.
This is Ireland's largest conservatory, with 3,500 pupils - from five-year-olds to adults - and 100 full-time degree, post-graduate and doctoral students. It is internationally acclaimed for its string department and very strong singing department; it has a symphony orchestra, junior orchestra, chamber orchestra, wind ensemble, various quartets and trios along with several bands and choruses.
Although Kelly, who is working with a vigorous team of colleagues and supporters, is a member of Cork City Council's arts committee, it took a year before the debacle could be discussed at council.
The frustration - and sheer physical discomfort - of all this led to innovative campaign strategies, with the series of European concerts organised as the "Tour of Shame", scheduled to begin in London with harpist Jean Kelly (yes, the daughter of Gerry Kelly and flautist Evelyn Grant) who featured on the latest Lord of the Rings soundtrack, among the performers.
Now, following the visit of Bertie Ahern to Cork last week, this is on hold until March 17th.
So, much to the relief of the Cork 2005 organisation, is Kelly's classical version of a David Blaine stunt, with the cellist suspended in a cage over the proposed CSM site and car-park recitals outside the old building during the year.
But plans to participate in the 2005 programme are going ahead despite the difficulties: "The Capital of Culture year belongs to the musicians, artists, teachers and writers of Cork who earned the designation on the backs of people like Bridget Doolan, Seamus Murphy, Aloys Fleischmann and Charles Lynch. We have to re-possess it, and we'll be part of it - although our campaign for the CSM goes way beyond 2005."
NSO scoops Cannes award
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra picked up one of the awards at this year's Cannes Classical Awards. The NSO won the Orchestra and Concerto: CD Premiere category of the critics' awards for its recording of Joly Braga Santos's Symphony No 4 under conductor Alvaro Cassuto. The recording was released in July 2002 on the Marco Polo label.
The Cannes Classical Awards, established six years ago, are organised in co-operation with several international music magazines. The award is made on the basis of a voting process involving several hundred critics from seven countries (Poland, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, the US and the UK). Critics can vote in eight categories, while special awards such as those for Lifetime Achievement are selected by the chairman and the editors of the participating magazines.
The RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra has a multi-disc agreement with Naxos and Marco Polo, two of the world's largest classical music labels, and has recorded complete Mendelssohn, Nielsen, Rachmaninov and Malcolm Arnold symphony cycles, as well as Verdi's Aïda and works by Brahms, Bruckner, Mahler and Tchaikovsky.
Niall Doyle, director of music at RTÉ, said the award was "especially gratifying given both its international prestige and the widely representative nature of the jury".
'Bye Child' for a BAFTA?
Novelist Bernard MacLaverty's first film, Bye Child, has been nominated for the prestigious Best Short Film category in the BAFTAs, writes Rosita Boland. Written and directed by Belfast-born MacLaverty, who is now based in Glasgow, the 17-minute film is based on Seamus Heaney's poem of the same name. Heaney's poem is about a feral child who was kept in a henhouse at the end of the garden: the poem was inspired by a true story.
"The poem was a springboard or starting point for the film," explains MacLaverty, "it's not a literal portrayal of the poem." Bye Child, which was produced by Andrew Bonner and Poetry in Motion production company, stars actress Susan Lynch, who played Nora in Pat Murphy's film about James Joyce's wife. The film took two years, on and off, to complete. Bye Child has been screened at the London Film Festival, the Edinburgh Fringe Film Festival and the Foyle Film Festival, and has just been invited to show at Finland's short film festival, at Tampere. "It's my first film as director and Andrew's first as producer, so we're not sure what the BAFTA nomination will do for screenings, but it can only draw attention to it," MacLaverty points out. The BAFTA winners will be announced at a televised awards ceremony in London tomorrow.
Dark themes
An exhibition of the photographic works of the late Harry Thuillier Jnr is due at the Irish Arts Centre in New York, thanks to the influence of actor Gabriel Byrne, who launched a book of the photographer's work, Through the Glass Darkly, in Dublin last March.
The New York exhibition, which Byrne will open on March 2nd, is organised by Harry's brother Ian Thuillier, a film-maker whose documentary on Harry's life, Darkroom, was screened last year on RTÉ and at film festivals around the world. It will be shown in Chicago at the EU International Film Festival next month.
Harry Thuillier, who died in Italy in 1997 at the age of 33, left a darkly beautiful collection of work. He was one of few photographers in Britain or Ireland to master platinum printing, an expensive, difficult medium, requiring large-format cameras. He travelled widely and his last "sold out" exhibition, Viet Nam, was shot using a pre-war panorama camera from the back of a rusty Minsk motorbike.