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Gillian Bowler, Founding Chairman of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.
All those who worked with Gillian Bowler, either as fellow board members or as staff at the museum during her
stalwart championing of the fledgling institution, will remember her with a smile. She was a tough person in that
role, and she needed to be, because the funding for the new museum was derisory when compared to what ob-
tained by the end of the founding decade, and the policies it pursued were deeply challenging for many people
in those early years.
IMMA opened its doors to the public on the 26 May 1991, an event that Gillian Bowler presided over with great
skill, diplomacy and good humour. Her lifelong interest in the visual arts and her friendships with artists meant
that she could speak to them, on that momentous occasion, with the same ease and understanding that she also
directed towards Taoiseach, Charles J. Haughey, who performed the opening, and to the various business people
who were her regular colleagues and whose generosity she intended to pursue in the interests of the institution.
Staff knew, when they approached her that the openness, accessibility and encouragement she showed them,
was genuine and would be followed through. Whatever her private views on controversial issues might have
been, once a decision was agreed between the Board and the Director, she not only stood by it, she argued for
it without reservation. Usually, though it didn’t come to that. From the perspective of senior curatorial staff, her
endorsement of the work of the museum, much of it ground-breaking and experimental, was total. She chaired
the Board of IMMA during its formative, and most exciting years. She was the chair for such heady moments as
when Nick Serota, presenting the Glen Dimplex artist award in 1996, listed the aspects of IMMA’s policy that he
intended to introduce to Tate Modern when it opened a couple of years later.
But she was also there to defend the museum from the conservatives who argued that we should be showing
paintings of donkeys on west of Ireland beaches in order to woo the general public. Her response to that piece
of condescension was to give herself wholeheartedly to IMMA’s most radical programmes, including
Unspoken
Truths
and
Once is Too Much
which dealt with the challenges facing inner city communities and with domestic
violence. Rita Fagan, a colleague of Gillian’s, on the Board, recalled how Gillian visited Saint Michael’s Family Re-
source Centre in Inchicore, helped them by providing computers and other much needed resources, mentored
them in business and management roles, and on one occasion, even flew two of them from Derry, where they
were invigilating
Unspoken Truths
on tour, to Dublin’s Shelbourne Hotel, so that they could share their real life ex-
perience of inner city communities with the cast of Eastenders. She faced down bullies, even on some occasions
on the Board, and managed to win their respect for the very projects they clamoured against and was greatly
appreciated by them for her friendly yet decisive approach to meetings.
Gillian Bowler steered IMMA through a process of self-definition between 1996, which brought together everyone
from the Chairman of the Board to the humblest member of staff, so that all voices were heard, in the process of
forging a shared vision and a mission for IMMA for the future. She willingly gave time, energy and good counsel,
to the Director, in all of this administrative, and structural work, but her real love was the art that went into the
museum and how that was shared with the publics who came through the doors. A particular favourite of hers
was Albert Irvin, and I recall with great pleasure, how she beamed with delight when, as my first solo purchase as
Head of Collections, I was authorized to choose a painting from his RHA exhibition in 1995, I unknowingly chose
Soho
, a painting that she particularly admired.
Gillian Bowler was Chairman of IMMA during the most exciting and challenging period of its history. She accepted
the challenges intelligently and courageously, and when necessary used humour to calm the inevitable detrac-
tors. As a final act of generosity, her husband Harry, has given her library to Kilkenny Collective of Arts Talent in
Callan, an organisation that IMMA has had contact with for many years. Gillian would have been delighted.
Catherine Marshall,
Senior Curator and Founding Head of Collections, 1995 – 2007, IMMA.