RT Journal Article
T1 Rapid Response Collecting and the Irish Abortion Referendum
A1 Brenda Malone
YR 2021
VO Special issue: Curating medicine
IS Autumn 2020
K1 abortion
K1 contemporary collecting
K1 contemporary history
K1 difficult histories
K1 Irish constitution
K1 Irish society
K1 National Museum of Ireland
K1 public referenda
K1 Repeal the 8th
K1 Reproductive rights
K1 women’s health
AB The last decade in Ireland has seen rapid societal change, including the enshrining of equal marriage and women’s right to bodily autonomy in the constitution via public referendum. In response, the National Museum of Ireland enacted a programme of collecting the material culture of such significant contemporary events in Ireland, which led to the formal establishment of the Contemporary Ireland Collection. The material culture of the referendum on the abolishment of the 8th Amendment of the Irish Constitution (Repeal the 8th) to allow for the legal termination of pregnancy formed the nucleus of the collection, and the rationale behind the identification of the representative themes and subsequent object choices has become the template on which further contemporary collecting is now based. This has enabled the institution and its curators to work collaboratively with the public in the expansion of its collections to fill the historic gaps and become more inclusive and representative of Ireland’s varied and difficult history.
NO For summaries of the history of Irish women and Irish Catholicism, see Valiulis, M, 1995, ‘Neither Feminist nor Flapper: the Ecclesiastical Construction of the Ideal Irish Woman’, in Chattel, Servant or Citizen? Women’s Status in Church, State, and Society, edited by Mary O’Dowd and Sabine Wichert, pp 168–178 (Belfast: Institute of Irish Studies), and Field, L, 2018, ‘The Abortion Referendum of 2018 and a Timeline of Abortion Politics in Ireland to Date’, Irish Political Studies 33 (4): 608–628.
NO For example, one poster carried the phrase ‘6 months is horrific Vote No’, implying that the legal time limit on abortion to be introduced would be six months, when the time limit was actually to be three months, with six months in specific cases of danger to the woman’s health or life
NO See Dublin Gazette article of the 3 May 2018, describing the actions of the ICRB and the response of both sides of the Repeal debate.
https://dublingazette.com/news/news-city-edition/anti-abortion-protest-outrage-icbr/ (accessed 24 November 2020)
NO Yarn-bombing, the public display of politically based knitted and crochet work as street art (sometimes described as guerrilla knitting) is a widely used form of activism and peaceful protest.
NO The National Museum of Ireland’s Contemporary Collecting Strategy document is available on the NMI’s website at https://www.museum.ie/getmedia/e8890dca-baa4-474f-8ad9-3c705f8a4d3c/NMI-Contemporary-Collecting-Strategy-2019-2023-FINAL.pdf (accessed 24 November 2020)
PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/20140
UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/collecting-the-abortion-referendum/
WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30