Arts Council of Northern Ireland

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland is the main agency responsible for the development and promotion of Irish painting and Irish sculpture in the counties of Antrim, Armagh, Derry, Down, Fermanagh and Tyrone, namely Northern Ireland. It is the sole national funding support for artists and arts organisations, and offers a wide variety of financial assistance through both government funding and National Lottery funds. Its offices are housed in the late Victorian mansion MacNeice House situated in the Malone Road in Belfast. It is named in honour of Belfast born poet Louis MacNeice whose father John Frederick MacNeice, lived in the house as Church of Ireland Bishop of Down, Connor and Dromore.

The Arts Council of Northern Ireland collection was started in 1943 by its predecessor Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts to support local painters and sculptors and to illustrate and endorse the story of the visual arts in the North of Ireland. Several important exhibitions were staged in its early days and the works of artists such as Kathleen Bridle, Sidney Smith, John Hewitt and John Hunter were shown. The collection grew slowly and by 1950 it could only boast a comparatively meagre thirty-six Irish paintings. However over the years major works by such artists as Gerard Dillon, Louis Le Brocquy, Colin Middleton, F.E. McWilliam, Henry Moore, Duncan Grant and John Piper have been either donated or purchased. Disastrously, in October 1967, many recently acquired paintings were irreparably damaged in a fire. Plans for the rebuilding of the collection were made but due to financial restraints it was decided that the replenishment would be undertaken little by little over a period of years. Other major artists have been added to the collection such as William Scott and the newer contemporary artists who include Micky Donnelly, Rita Duffy, Basil Blackshaw, Dermot Seymour, Chris Wilson and Gordon Woods.