Ulster Museum


The Ulster Museum, located in the Botanic Gardens in Belfast, has around 8,000 square metres of public display space, featuring material from the collections of fine art and applied art, archaeology, ethnography, treasures from the Spanish Armada, local history, numismatics, industrial archaeology, botany, zoology and geology. It is the largest museum in Northern Ireland, and one of the components of National Museums Northern Ireland.

History

The Ulster Museum was founded as the Belfast Natural History Society in 1821 and began exhibiting in 1833. It has included an art gallery since 1890. Originally called the Belfast Municipal Museum and Art Gallery, in 1929, it moved to its present location in Stranmillis. The new building was designed by James Cumming Wynne.
In 1962, courtesy of the Museum Act 1961, it was renamed as the Ulster Museum and was formally recognised as a national museum. A major extension constructed by McLaughlin & Harvey Ltd to designs by Francis Pym who won the 1964 competition was opened in 1972 and Pym's only completed work. It was published in several magazines and was until alteration the most important example of Brutalism in Northern Ireland. It was praised by David Evans for the "almost barbaric power of its great cubic projections and cantilevers brooding over the conifers of the botanic gardens like a mastodon".
Since the 1940s the Ulster Museum has built up a good collection of art by modern Irish, and particularly Ulster-based artists.
In 1998, the Ulster Museum merged with the Ulster Folk and Transport Museum and the Ulster-American Folk Park to form the National Museums and Galleries of Northern Ireland.
In July 2005, a £17m refurbishment of the museum was announced, with grants from the Heritage Lottery Fund and the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure. In October 2006 the museum closed its doors until 2009, to allow for the work.
Illustrations of historic interest of interiors before alterations will be found as nos 183 and 237 in Larmour, P. 1987. The redevelopment drew criticism from many significant figures in the architectural community and the Twentieth Century Society, especially for changes to the Brutalist character and dismantling of the spiral sequence of rooms in the Pym extension.
The museum reopened in October 2009, eighty years to the day since its original opening. Within a month over 100,000 people had visited the museum.
The reopening saw the introduction of Monday closure, which has received criticism from the public and in the press. All NMNI sites are to close on Mondays. This decision is being reviewed by DCAL.

Collections

The museum has galleries covering the history of Northern Ireland from the earliest times to the very recent past, collections of art, mostly modern or ethnographic, historic and contemporary fashion and textiles, and also holds exhibitions.
The scientific collections of the Ulster Museum contain important collections of Irish birds, mammals, insects, molluscs, marine invertebrates, flowering plants, algae and lichens, as well as an archive of books and manuscripts relating to Irish natural history. The museum also maintains a natural history website named Habitas. In the late 1980s and the early 1990s it had a permanent exhibition on dinosaurs which has since been scaled back considerably. There is also a collection of rocks, minerals and fossils. It is also home to Ireland’s only known dinosaur fossil bones.

Irish archaeology

The museum contains significant finds from Northern Ireland, although in earlier periods these were often sent to the British Museum or later Dublin, as with the Broighter Hoard, now in the National Museum of Ireland. Objects in the museum include the Malone Hoard of 19 polished Neolithic axe heads, the Moss-side Hoard of Mesolithic stone tools, the important Downpatrick Hoard of Bronze Age gold jewellery, part of the Late Roman Coleraine Hoard, the Viking Shanmullagh Hoard, and the medieval coins in the Armagh City Hoard and Armagh Castle Street Hoard.
There are other significant objects of the Bronze Age gold jewellery for which Ireland is notable, including four of the 100-odd surviving gold lunulae, and some important early Celtic art, including a decorated bronze shield found in the River Shannon, and the Bann disc, bronze with triskele decoration.

Zoology

Historic collections

The Zoology Department also maintains collections of wildlife art. Works by
Peter Scott, Joseph Wolf, Eric Ennion, John Gerrard Keulemans, Roger Tory Peterson, Charles Tunnicliffe, Robert Gillmor and Archibald Thorburn are included. Illustrated works held by the Zoology Department include British Entomology - being illustrations and descriptions of the genera of insects found in Great Britain and Ireland – a classic work of entomology by John Curtis and Niccolò Gualtieri's Index Testarum Conchyliorum, quae adservantur in Museo Nicolai Gualtieri 1742.

Botany

The herbarium (BEL)

The herbarium in the Ulster Museum, is based on specimens from Belfast Natural History and Philosophical Society ; the Belfast Naturalists' Field Club ; the Belfast Museum and Art Gallery and the herbarium of the Botany Department of The Queen's University, Belfast acquired in 1968. In total the number of specimens is more than 100,000. Although specimens from Northern Ireland are well represented, specimens from elsewhere in the world have been acquired by donation, exchange and purchase. All branches of the world's flora are represented: algae, lichens, fungi, mosses and pteridophytes, conifers and angiosperms. Little information about the Irish flora before 1830 is available, the oldest specimen in the Ulster Museum is an alga: Batrachospermum moniliforme collected in 1798 by John Templeton, other specimens of Batrachospermum, originally incorrectly identified as Thorea ramoissima were collected by John Templeton in 1815 from a "boghole" in County Donegal. It was originally published by Harvey in 1841.

List of some of the collectors

The collection contains works by:
The Ulster Museum's Fashion & Textiles Collection aims to reflect the history of fashionable dress from as early as the 18th century, as well as contemporary international designer and high street fashion. It comprises approximately 5000 objects including garments, accessories, historic and contemporary jewellery, and a collection of dolls and toys including pieces by Armand Marseille.
The museum's policy is to collect clothing and accessories as an Applied Art, with an emphasis on acquiring pieces that are of high design quality and/or representative of significant changes in fashion history. The collection includes eighteenth-century Spitalfields silk gowns, early 20th century Parisian couture, and contemporary international fashion. Designers represented in the collection include Chanel, Dior, Alexander McQueen, John Galliano, Vivienne Westwood and JW Anderson.
The textiles collection includes pieces by important female Irish embroiders, such as the 'Lennox Quilt' of 1712 by Martha Lennox, and a bedcover by the renowned eighteenth-century letter-writer and artist, Mrs Mary Delany. The Antrim bed furniture, a complete set worked by or under the supervision of Lady Helena McDonnell, 1705–83, daughter of the 4th Earl of Antrim was purchased in 1982. Tapestries include 'Arabesque' by Joshua Morris and the mid-20th century Adam and Eve by Louis le Brocquy. The textiles collection also includes two large linen wall hangings, Océanie – Le Ciel and Océanie – La Mer, by the French artist Henri Matisse.