EPIC The Irish Emigration Museum, was voted Europe’s Leading Tourist Attraction 2019 and 2020 in the World Travel Awards. It is open seven days a week with timed tickets and a carefully designed walking route to ensure social distancing. Dr Patrick Greene, CEO and Museum Director says, “Visitors to the award-winning digital museum will find that we have used the time when we have been locked-down to introduce exciting new features. We will be celebrating EPIC’s fifth birthday in May, opening a remarkable exhibition “Out in the World” about Ireland’s LGBTQ+ diaspora activists in June, and two new galleries will open in July. Our shop has many new lines and we have introduced online retail to serve customers all over the globe. Everyone at EPIC is looking forward to welcoming visitors for a memorable experience.” www.epicchq.com

To coincide with International Museum Day, the awarding-winning museum 14 Henrietta Street will be launching three new books that recount the history of 14 Henrietta Street through the stories of the people who lived there. Covering a timeframe of more than two centuries, each book will take a distinct era of the house’s history as its focus, situating the building and its people in the wider social, political, economic and cultural context of the time. The books trace the journey of this north inner city address from grandeur to decline and reveals the changing fortunes of those who called it home. Published and commissioned by Dublin City Council Culture Company, which operates 14 Henrietta Street, it was designed by Atelier Design. www.14henriettastreet.ie

The National Gallery of Ireland, which reopened last Monday, May 10, following 137 days of closure, is hosting Its “New Perspectives” exhibition. This allows the public to view many of new acquisitions to the national collection for the first time. Some highlights include Cityscape by American artist Alice Neel and City Rectangle by Ilya Bolotowsky. “New Perspectives” also features works that have been purchased by Friends and Patrons of the National Gallery of Ireland, including Her First Communion by John Lavery and Crayfish by Anne Yeats. Tickets for “New Perspectives” can be purchased online, starting from €5. Tickets can be booked by visiting www.nationalgallery.ie.

The Hunt Museum, Limerick launched a competition to create a sculpture from a chestnut tree stump for its new Museum in a Garden. You’ll need some background information first. The Hunt Museum in a Garden is currently being landscaped as a new public space for Limerick, and includes spaces for a Sensory Garden with plenty of seating, a garden chess set, boules and ‘hills’ to roll down. Conceived as an extension to the museum, there are seven sculpture plinths in situ surrounded by planting that express the proposed sculpture’s origins. Three dimensional scanning and printing are being used to reproduce large scale replicas of artefacts within the museum, “hidden” in the collection cases. As for your sculpture ideas, ideally they will reflect objects in the museum and it could also be a climbable structure. The winning artist will receive up to €4,000 in prize money, with entries and pictures and drawings of your idea to be submitted by Friday, May 28. www.huntmuseum.com

The remains of Kevin Barry’s last cigarette, the Brixton Prison pillowcase of hunger striker Terence MacSwiney, and Michael Hogan’s GAA jersey are just some of the morbid yet powerful exhibits on display in Ireland’s local authority museums. Members of the Local Authorities Museums Network have joined forces to showcase a series of exhibits relating to the Decade of Centenaries – all of which goes live today on the International Council of Museums Ireland’s website. These objects, which have never been brought together in this way before, will highlight some of the stories relating to the War of Independence and the Civil War period. Liam Bradley, LAMN chair and Monaghan County Museum curator says, “We hope that this virtual exhibition will serve to remind the public of the incredible collections on display at local museums throughout the country, and, now we are beginning to re-open, that museums can provide a safe space for our imaginations to roam and our minds to meet.” www.icomireland.com

Other museums worth visiting are:

Little Museum of Dublin on Stephen’s Green, Dublin; www.littlemuseum.ie

National Museum of Ireland – Decorative Arts and History at Collins Barracks, Dublin; www.museum.ie

National Museum of Ireland – Archaeology at Kildare Street, Dublin; www.museum.ie

Seamus Heaney: Listen Now Again at the Bank of Ireland Cultural and Heritage Centre on College Green, Dublin; www.nli.ie

The Book of Kells and the Long Room at Trinity College Dublin; www.tcd.ie

Croke Park GAA Museum & Skyline Tours at Croke Park, Dublin; www.crokepark.ie

Marsh’s Library at St Patrick’s Cathedral, Dublin; www.marshlibrary.ie

National Print Museum at Beggars Bush Barracks, Dublin; www.nationalprintmuseum.ie

Museum of Literature Ireland (MOLI), St Stephen’s Green, Dublin; www.moli.ie

GPO Witness History at the GPO, O’Connell St, Dublin; www.gpowitnesshistory.ie

National Leprechaun Museum, Jervis Street, Dublin; www.leprechaunmuseum.ie/