A Thousand five hundred years of Irish Art (more or less)
The 28th Annual Toronto St Patrick's Day Parade is on this Sunday, March 15.
Happily the parade coincides with the arrival of an amazing series of books at Toronto Reference Library: The Art and Architecture of Ireland.
The five volume series is published by Yale University Press for the Royal Irish Academy and the Paul Mellon Centre. It covers over 1,500 years of Irish art, beginning with the Medieval period around 400 AD and continuing to the end of the Twentieth century. Special additional volumes look at painting, sculpture and architecture.
The series arrived with quite of a bit of hoopla in its native land accompanied with the kind of video spot one usually sees reserved for new cars :
Introduction to the Art and Architecture of Ireland (AAI) from The Royal Irish Academy on Vimeo.
The books are reference but any one of the 600 page volumes would be a great way to prepare for this Sunday or to spend the next Spring rain storm.
If you're looking for something to take home there are a lot of great choices:
If that's not enough, Toronto Public Library has two multi-part video series:
They both have a LOT of history to cover.
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