Audrey Whitty
















From February 2023, Dr Audrey Whitty is Director of the National Library of Ireland. From 2019 to January 2023 she was Deputy Director/Head of Collections and Learning, National Museum of Ireland (NMI), where she was a member of the senior management team and responsible for all aspects of the care, preservation and interpretation of the 5 million plus objects in the collections across the four museums that make up the National Museum of Ireland. This included management of the four Curatorial departments (Irish Antiquities, Art & Industry, Natural History, Irish Folklife), Conservation, Registration, Education, Photography, Design, publications and the four Museums’ exhibitions programme.

From 2015-19 Dr Whitty was Keeper of the Art and Industrial Division (Decorative Arts, Design and History), National Museum of Ireland (NMI). She was responsible for all collections, exhibitions, and leading the curatorial department and team on the Collins Barracks site. From 2015 she project-managed and opened several exhibitions at Collins Barracks, including the acclaimed Proclaiming a
Republic: The 1916 Rising exhibition. During 2013 and 2014 she was Curator of European and Asian Glass at The Corning Museum of Glass, New York where she was responsible for an extensive collection in what is widely regarded as the greatest glass museum in the world. From 2001 to 2013, Dr Whitty was Curator of Ceramics, Glass and Asian collections, Art and Industrial Division, NMI. She has curated numerous exhibitions, most notably A Dubliner’s Collection of Asian Art: The Albert Bender Exhibition and the National Museum’s visible storage facility What’s In Store? (approx. 16,500 objects), which showcases some of the museum’s most important collections of applied
arts. A graduate (B.A.: History and Archaeology) and postgraduate (M.A.: Archaeology) of University College Dublin, she also has a doctorate from Trinity College Dublin in History of Art as a result of her thesis, ‘The Albert Bender (1866-1941) Donations of Far Eastern Art to the National Museum of Ireland in the context of his Cultural Interests in Ireland and California’. In addition to her role at the National Museum she has been Irish Commissioner to both European Ceramic Context and European Glass Context, 2006-12 (European Union-wide biennales of contemporary glass and ceramics), which take place on the Danish island of Bornholm.

In 2009 she became the first Irish woman to be elected to the International Academy of Ceramics based in Geneva. She is currently vice-chair of the Irish Museums Association, a trustee of the British Glass Foundation/White House Cone Museum of Glass, UK and is also a board member of North Lands Creative in Scotland. She has authored over seventy publications and lectured to such institutions as the Sorbonne, Paris; Trinity College Dublin; Art Institute of Chicago; National Maritime Museum, Greenwich; SOFA (Sculptural Objects and Functional Art), Chicago; National University of Ireland, Galway; the American Irish Historical Society, New York City; the Irish-Chinese Cultural Society; New York Metropolitan Glass Club; University College Dublin; Museum of Glass, Tacoma, Washington; National University of Ireland, Maynooth and National College of Art & Design, Dublin. She is author of the major publication, The Albert Bender Collection of Asian Art in the National Museum of Ireland, which was published by the National Museum of Ireland and Wordwell Books in 2011.

Info

Name
Audrey Whitty

Activity
writer

Country, region
Ireland

Website
www.nli.ie

Documents
List of Dr Audrey Whitty’s publications