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• W3217259314 abstract "Mr. George Bernard Shaw has just been paying a visit to Dublin, as the guest of Sir Horace Plunkett, at Kilteragh, Foxrock.Before returning to London last night he kindly allowed the Irish Times to discuss with him that question of all Dublin municipal questions—the site for the new Art Gallery.On this matter controversy has indeed waxed furious. Though the Corporation has given its decision in the matter, the impression on the public is that all has not yet been said in reference to the site. So, in inviting Mr. Shaw to speak on this burning theme, our representative realised that he was opening up a topic which is apparently still fair matter for debate, as well as one of surpassing civic interest and concern.Mr. Shaw had, of course, heard all—or a good deal—about the proposed site—the spot now occupied by the Metal Bridge. It had interested him, too, and he formed opinions in reference to it.Our representative explained that this choice of site was favoured by Sir Hugh Lane himself.“Has Sir Hugh Lane ever smelt the Liffey!” “G.B.S.” asked grimly.Our representative confessed that he did not know—but hastened to add that Mr. Shaw, by this question, showed himself to be rather out of date. The Liffey? Why, the Liffey—as the result of the new drainage scheme, had begun a new era. It did not yet quite meander as a pellucid stream, but all Dublin citizens were in hopes that that was only a matter of some definite time. The Poddle River would possibly be sending down a silvery cascade instead of the present turgid mass on which seagulls feed and fatten. That was to be all in good time. But the odour, which Mr. Shaw's youth was famous all the world over, had already lost its ancient glory—it was, in fact, a dead, almost a forgotten thing.“Pardon me,” interrupted Mr. Shaw. “I crossed the river yesterday by a bridge which has been put up for the purpose of concealing the Custom House. The smell may be dead, but either its death has been followed by decomposition, or its ghost has not been laid—for it assailed my nose as violently as ever.”2And here “G.B.S.” quoted the lines of our national poet:— You may break, you may shatter, the Bridge if you will,But the sent of the Liffey will cling to it still. It was hard to have poor old Tom Moore brought up in judgement against the Bridge site.“But, Mr. Shaw,” went on our representative, the point of view of the site whole-hogger assumed for the moment—“Is not there a touch of medieval romance about the suggestion—a whiff of Florence, of the time of the Medicis, the period of Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Sanzio—a host of others? There is the Ponte Vecchio, for instance.”“I admit that there is something romantic about a gallery thrown across a river on a fairy bridge, but the Liffey would take the romance out of anything.”Our representative, however, pointed out what was considered by the bridge site advocates as an advantage of unquestionable potency—the safety from the fire afforded by such a position.“But goodness gracious,” was the immediate rejoinder, “a bridge site is the most dangerous in the world from that point of view—unless you propose to make arrangements for dropping the Gallery into the water when fire breaks out, in which case the pictures will be spoiled. It might as well be said that the way to prevent coals from burning is to put them into a grate—almost a blast furnace. There is always wind up and down the river. That wind would be under the Gallery. The place would burn furiously if it once caught fire.“I do not say,” Mr. Shaw went on, “that there are not some building in Dublin that I should not like to see on bridges, or even at the bottom of the river, but the very thought of that valuable collection of pictures there makes me shudder.”Our representative had, of course, been already roughly aware of Mr. Shaw's estimate of the pictures. The association here of the adjective “valuable” with the collection tempted him to seek a little further light on that point.“You think it valuable then, Mr. Shaw!”“Think it! It is valuable. Is anybody in Dublin so stupendously ignorant as not to know that it will be one of the most precious collections of the kind in Europe? However, if Dublin does not appreciate it, it can easily sell it at any time. The prices the pictures would fetch will open our eyes to the merits of the pictures, if we cannot find out by looking at them.”“Where would you put them?”“I should put them in Merrion square. I should make the centre an Acropolis. You have the National Gallery there, and all the Museums. What better site could you suggest?”“But some of us wish to bring art to the people. The people don't live in Merrion square.”“Well do you think the places they do live in so nice that they never want to go away from them? Do you think you can popularise art by putting it in dirty places? What the popular quarters of Dublin need is a thorough burning down. When you have done that, and replaced them in a manner worthy of a great city, it will be time enough to talk of putting your art treasures there. A labourer may want a publichouse at the corner of his slum; but when he has an impulse to look at pictures, he wants them as far away as possible from the squalor in which he is compelled to live. Going to Merrion square would be part of the treat. It will be more exciting than going to the South Pole, and nobody has ever been inside Merrion square since the six days of creation.”“But the poor!” again queried our representative.“Stuff! The poor have nothing to do with pictures. Our object is to preserve good pictures for ever and to get rid of the poor at the earliest opportunity. You must level up the poor to your pictures, and not level down your pictures to the poor. The poor will burn your pictures some day if you don't make an end of poverty. In the meantime, the further away your pictures are from the poor, the safer they will be. The poor do not want pictures from you; they want houses in Merrion square and incomes sufficient to keep them up. When you arrange that for them it will be time enough to worry yourself about their interest in Sir Hugh Lane's pictures.”This was all that Mr. Bernard Shaw could be persuaded to say on the subject. It only remained for our representative to thank him for his very interesting and valuable views on a matter which is very much in the minds of all Dublin people." @default.
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• W3217259314 title "On the Municipal Gallery: Interview with Mr. Bernard Shaw The Danger of Fire The Poor and Pictures Municipal Art Gallery The Bridge Site" @default.
• W3217259314 doi "https://doi.org/10.5325/shaw.41.2.0459" @default.
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