Charcoal and chalk on paper © Alice Maher. Image, National Gallery of Ireland
It Took a Century: Women Artists and the RHA opens today at the National Gallery of Ireland. It took a century for the Royal Hibernian Academy to elect the first woman artist, and another century before the first woman President was elected. The exhibition showcases women’s membership of the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts from the election in 1923 of the first woman member, Sarah Purser, to the first woman President, Dr Abigail O’Brien, in 2018.
As part of the RHA bicentenary celebrations the exhibition combines an historic survey of the past 100 years together with a presentation of work by current woman members of the Academy, which has now achieved equitable representation in its membership. The constituent works are drawn almost exclusively from the collections of the National Gallery of Ireland and the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts. The show runs until October 2022.
