Latest news with #TrevorWhite
Irish Independent
17-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Independent
‘Home: The Story of Zak Moradi' review: Leitrim hurler embarks on emotional quest to reconnect with his past
Moving immigrant story shows best and worst of human nature Pat Stacey You may already be familiar with the subject of Trevor White's documentary Home: The Story of Zak Moradi (now streaming on RTÉ Player). You'll certainly know him if you're a hurling fan from Leitrim. He plays as a left-corner forward for the county's senior team. He was a part of the side that won the Lory Meagher Cup in 2016, a dream come true.
The Guardian
18-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
From Joyce's death mask to Bono's sunglasses: a look around the Little Museum of Dublin's grand curiosities
There are certain museums around the world that go beyond their role of housing artefacts and somehow seem to act as portals to the past. The Frick Collection in New York and Marcel Proust's cork-lined bedroom at the Musée Carnavalet in Paris both hum with a timeless energy that transcends the exhibits on display. The Little Museum of Dublin is also such a space. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. Learn more. Within seconds of ascending the stairs of this beautiful four-storey Georgian townhouse at 15 St Stephen's Green, a different era appears to take hold. The modern world disappears and I imagine myself back in Georgian times, when this red-bricked terrace was built along with so many of the beautiful squares and parks throughout the city centre. Dubliner Trevor White persuaded Dublin city council to lend him this building back in 2011 to open the first museum in the city dedicated to all things Dublin. Armed with a great idea and no collection, he took to the airwaves and asked the listeners of the beloved Marian Finucane show on RTÉ (Ireland's national broadcaster) to trawl through their attics and cupboards for one-of-a-kind curiosities and mementoes relating to the Irish capital. More than 1,000 exhibits flooded in, ranging from a pair of Bono's iconic sunglasses to a ticket for the only Dublin concerts the Beatles played, in 1963. James Joyce's death mask was donated along with a first edition of Ulysses. A bottle of unopened lemonade rescued from the wreck of a mail boat torpedoed off Dublin during the first world war was offered for display coupled with an unopened jar of Sudocrem from 1931 (the antiseptic cream was invented in the city). A 1980s ledger from a nearby Magdalene laundry (where pregnant, unmarried women were forced into servitude) was unearthed with listed clients including the president's residence and state agencies. All the items were carefully curated according to the decade of their provenance and exhibited throughout the museum's high-ceilinged rooms. The museum became an immediate hit with locals and visitors and more than a million people have taken the 29-minute guided tour of the exhibits over the past 14 years. Tripadvisor rates it as the third best visitor attraction in Ireland, and the 12th best in Europe. I often find myself there, early on a Sunday morning, when very little else is open in the city, sitting in the recreation of Irish Times editor Bertie Smyllie's office on the top floor with views across Stephen's Green to the Dublin mountains. Eccentric Bertie pedalled his bicycle to the newspaper until 1954 with a typewriter balanced on his handlebars. He was responsible for championing many of Ireland's greatest writers including Patrick Kavanagh and Flann O'Brien. Next door, in the U2 room, I like to pick out the teenage incarnations of the band from a black-and-white class photo at Mount Temple, the school where they famously first met as schoolboys. This photo, just like this museum as a whole, brings a sense that the past can still be accessed. As visitor numbers rocketed, the museum sought funding to expand its exhibits and shop into the basement and garden and to install a long-overdue lift to provide universal access to all the floors. After a year of renovations, at a cost of €4.3m, the museum reopened on 5 June with a new library and archive, a screening room and a new exhibition of fearless women snaking up the stairwell, taking its cue from a quote by President Mary Robinson: 'I was elected by the women of Ireland, who instead of rocking the cradle, rocked the system.' One of the world's finest doll's houses has taken up residence on the first floor. Modelled on Leinster House round the corner, the seat of the Irish government, Tara's Palace took more than 20 years to build and it has been given to the museum along with a slew of new donations to celebrate the reopening. President Mary McAleese has sent in her rosary beads; the original maquette for the sculpture of singer Luke Kelly (of the Dubliners fame) in the Docklands has found a perch; and a whole room of wild and wonderful taxidermied animals with a Dublin connection have taken up residence. In 1988, Dublin marked the millennium of its founding with a year-long celebration of civic events. Many homes in the city still proudly display a famous milk bottle from this time, embossed with the Dublin City coat of arms, and you can find one of these on a mantelpiece at the museum. After decades of neglect and inner-city dereliction, 1988 marked a sea change in how many Dubliners viewed their capital. Trevor White also traces the igniting of his passion for Dublin to this time. Everything he has worked for at the Little Museum of Dublin, along with his equally passionate team, has been designed to inspire an ongoing appreciation and love of Dublin, the little city that could. Little Museum of Dublin is open 9.30am to 5pm, with the guided tour bookable for €18,
Irish Times
02-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Irish Times
Little Museum of Dublin to reopen after year-long €4.3m makeover
The Little Museum of Dublin is set to reopen this week after a year-long, €4.3 million makeover. The museum's Georgian town house at 15 St Stephen's Green has been made fully accessible on all floors, and the interior has been refurbished and redecorated. But the contents, a gloriously eccentric and eclectic clutter of ephemera, charting the life and times of some of Dublin's great characters and events, remain largely unchanged, though much enhanced. It's a visitor experience that has made the Little Museum one of Europe's most popular destinations. READ MORE 'We are just behind the Acropolis and ahead of the British Museum [on Tripadvisor],' says director Trevor White. 'It's a handmade museum – people want to touch, feel and handle exhibits and that openness really resonates with our guests.' The refurbishment, which was part financed by Dublin City Council , the Department of Culture , Fáilte Ireland and private donations, has allowed for the introduction of new items, as well as reimagining popular displays, including the U2 -dominated Made in Dublin music room, which now has a striking maquette of Vera Klute 's head statue of Luke Kelly, his face looming out of a spotlit dark corner. New items also include Tara's Palace, a 2.5 metre by 4 metre miniature modelled on Leinster House (among others) that was in storage for years following its departure from Powerscourt House in Wicklow. The palace dominates a ground floor-over-basement room devoted to Georgian Dublin. Last weekend, contractors added the finishing touches to the refurbishment as head of museum design Dara Flynn and deputy curator Daryl Hendley Rooney reset the displays, aided by former Little Museum curator Simon O'Connor, until recently director of the Museum of Literature . The entrance to the museum is via the basement, off which a tiny rear garden will be home to an old K1 telephone box. A stairwell devoted to former Dublin lord mayor Alfie Byrne leads to the Little Library, a non-fiction archive and reading area. [ Tourism slump continues - April data shows decline in visitor numbers Opens in new window ] Adjoining the Tara's Palace/Georgian Dublin room on the ground floor is an Animals of Dublin room, aimed at primary schoolchildren. Brendan Bracken and Christy Brown dominate the stairwell returns up through the house. A first floor room overlooking Stephen's Green is dedicated to Dublin – from Victorian times through the city's Little Jerusalem Jewish quarter, Oscar Wilde , Nelson's Pillar and the 1916 revolutionary era. Other new items are more personal in origin. When Frankfurt-based lawyer Claire Lloyd was home in Glasgow last year to visit her father Christopher Thomson, he handed her an envelope, remarking: 'You'll like this.' Inside, there was a copy of a cartoon showing a rather portly fellow riding a bicycle while simultaneously tapping, two-finger style, on a portable typewriter balanced on the handlebars, pipe in mouth and a large-brimmed hat perched on his head. Nearby, the scene also depicted a policeman looking on, slightly aghast at the spectacle. A handwritten note across the top of the cartoon read: 'Irish Tatler sketch. December 1940.' And across the bottom was added: 'Really, it is somewhat libellous!' The writer identified himself merely as 'B'. [ In the editor's chair: RM Smyllie's life and Irish Times Opens in new window ] Another of the envelope's contents was a tiny newspaper cutting, a single column short, as small news items used to be known in newspapers, this one a mere 12 lines long. 'Honour for Irish Journalist,' said the headline. The piece recorded that on February 5th, 1939, the president of the Czecho-Slovak Republic, as it was known then, had conferred the honour of Officer of the Order of the White Lion on none other than 'Mr R M Smyllie, Editor of The Irish Times'. This too had a handwritten note. 'A Timida, a chara!' it said. 'I know this will interest you,' and it was signed 'Bertie'. It was posted to Ms Lloyd's great grandmother's cousin, Alexandra Smyllie, with whom Robert Maire Smyllie, known as Bertie Smyllie , corresponded regularly. Glasgow and Ayrshire-based Alexandra was evidently a little introverted, hence the Latin greeting – a timida – meaning shy one. Glasgow born but Sligo reared, Bertie Smyllie was a huge figure in Dublin. As editor, he shepherded The Irish Times from its soft, middle-of-the-road unionist background outlook, to one of being comfortable with, and accepting of, Irish independence. In the process, he imbued the paper with a distinctive literary bent, giving free rein to characters like Brian O'Nolan, aka Flann O'Brien , who wrote a column as Myles na gCopaleen. Smyllie's place in Irish history was a revelation to Ms Lloyd and her father. 'We had no idea,' she said during a recent visit to Ireland, including to Delgany Golf Club where Smyllie was captain in 1945 and 1946. 'I remember my grandmother telling me about him back in the 1980s when I was a child, ie, 'You know about Bertie, don't you? Bertie went to Ireland. He was a journalist.' Or 'Bertie was an editor. He worked for The Irish Times.' That was all I knew, and I forgot about him over the years ... until recently when we came across a few documents, letters and clippings in my grandmother's old files.' The cartoon and award story are now in the museum's Irish Times room, along with other items from the newspaper's history (including Smyllie's famous V-for-victory front page with which he wrong-footed the paper's wartime censor) and several new items, notably from former foreign correspondent Conor O'Clery 's distinguished career. A Chesterfield couch will encourage visitors to delve into books by Irish Times writers or just lounge a while, viewing Martyn Turner cartoons or photographs selected by retired picture editor Brenda Fitzsimons , and other newspaper ephemera. Beside the Irish Times room is at the top of the house will be rotating exhibition space – a selection of Mick Brown's photographs of Dublin from the 1960s through to the early 2000s and, later, an exhibition marking 200 years of the Coombe Hospital. The museum has one tiny room, space for a single chair and just one person. The occupant will be able to watch, on screen, as Mary Merritt, a survivor of a Magdalene Laundry, talks on camera about her life, much of it memorialised in the groundbreaking play, You Can Leave at Any Time. All part of the mosaic of Dublin. The Little Museum reopens to the public on Thursday
