Crawford Art Gallery

Crawford Art Gallery is located in the southern Irish city of Cork. The original building was erected in 1724 as Cork’s Custom House. In 1830 the old Custom House building was given to the Royal Cork Institution, a forerunner of the present University College Cork and twenty years later the building became a Government School of Design. It was extended in 1884 to house studios and galleries primarily to provide working areas for the ever increasing number of students, at the expense of William Horatio Crawford, after whom it was called the Crawford School of Art. In the early 19th century the building became a school of art and a gallery which was the precursor to the establishment of what was to become a fine art collection. When the School of Art relocated to its current premises in 1979, the building became the home for the Crawford Art Gallery.

In 2000 the Crawford Art Gallery further extended its gallery area by creating a new exhibition wing of contemporary art designed by Dutch architect Erick van Egeraat. This new development has created 1,000 square meters of added exhibition space enabling the Gallery to offer a wider, more modern-day spectrum of exhibits. The original gallery collection was formed in 1819, when a set of Graeco-Roman and Neo-Classical sculpture casts were presented to the Cork Society of Arts. This collection was quickly augmented with works by students and teachers of the Cork School of Art, formed that same year. Since then the core collection has been increased with the purchase of works by Irish artists, many of them staff or graduates of the Cork School of Art. The permanent collection of the Crawford Art Gallery has increased gradually in recent years. Its strong point is undeniably 20th century and contemporary Irish art. By the end of the first decade of the millennium there were in excess of 3000 items in the collection.