Online Exhibition: Beggars and Artisans: A Cultural History of Cork’s Franciscan Friary

This week The River-side will post a series of blog posts comprising a student-created online exhibition ‘Beggars and Artisans: A Cultural History of Cork’s Franciscan Friary.’ This online exhibition is curated and overseen by Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton, Senior Lecturer, UCC’s School of History and Elaine Harrington, Special Collections Librarian, UCC Library. Two MA in Medieval History students: Morgan Hole and Martha Ewence, created the exhibition as part of HI6091 Skills for Medieval Historians. Dr Małgorzata Krasnodębska-D’Aughton, Senior Lecturer in Medieval History in the School of History has written an introduction to Beggars and Artisans.

This online exhibition uses printed items from Munster Printing, from UCC Library’s Special Collections, to explore themes of cultural continuity with a particular focus on a single church of St Francis in Cork. The exhibition celebrates the ongoing collaboration between Special Collections and the MA in Medieval History programme; this collaboration has already brought about four other online exhibitions inspired by the Library’s early modern maps, facsimiles and rare books: Mapping Cork, The Luttrell Psalter, The Book of Kells and Viking Cork. 

We thank Dr Kevin Murray from the Department of Early & Medieval Irish, Prof. Lee Jenkins from the School of English and Dr Anne-Julie Lafaye from the Irish Research Council for addressing our queries in relation to different parts of the blog.

Many thanks from all in the project for the generosity in providing images free of charge from Trinity College Dublin Library, the Cork Historical & Archaeological Society and Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute, UCD and UCD-OFM Partnership. Our thanks also to the National Gallery (London) and the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York) in providing images under a Creative Commons licence.

More importantly, the project has been completed during the COVID-19 crisis and its completion is a great testimony to the value of teamwork and collegiality, and the commitment of the MA students to produce high quality research during challenging times.
All posts may be accessed via https://blogs.ucc.ie/wordpress/theriverside/tag/beggars-and-artisans/ Please share posts as #BeggarsAndArtisan