An evening with An Lanntair’s archive

Diardaoin 26 An Giblean

George Wylie items from our archive including handwritten letters, notes and the newspaper clipping which inspired his palm tree letterbox.

Once upon a time, not so long ago, the An Lanntair archive of posters, photographs, prints, paintings, correspondence and memorabilia resembled your average chaotic attic. Rammed and crammed into a single small room, it was a free-form mess: a congealed mass containing material accumulated from artists, writers and influential members of the community dating back to 1985.    Even if you knew something was there, chances are you’d never find it.

Ella Macaulay’s mission was to sort this out: properly archive it and digitise it.   A monumental, labour-intensive task.  But she did it.  And Ella will be presenting an evening about what she did and showing some of the more unusual, interesting and intriguing items she unearthed in the process.

To help explain the provenance and history of some of these, she will be joined by Head of Visual Arts & Literature at An Lanntair, Roddy Murray.  Roddy is in with the brickwork and if he doesn’t know, chances are no-one does.

Expect surprises!

Here’s a little preview:

Prints from modernist Paul Strand’s collection of photographs, Tir A’ Mhurain, which were part of An Lanntair’s opening exhibition in 1985.