4 December 2013: NYU James Connolly exhibition on display in Trinity College Dublin
The Long Room Hub in Trinity College Dublin is hosting an exhibition entitled ‘Labor & Dignity – James Connolly in America. The exhibition was conceived by New York University’s Glucksman Ireland House, and was funded by the Government of Ireland’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
The exhibition explores the time that Connolly spent in the United States between 1903 and 1910, where he witnessed the successes and failures of labor radicalism and unionization, and of working class conditions resulting from unregulated corporate expansion. During this period, he became one of an influential second generation of Irish American leaders in the US who rallied immigrants from all over Europe to press for the dignity of labor. Turning homeward, he insisted that the fight for Irish nationalism was inseparable from the battle for the rights of all workers, in factories as well as on farms. Connolly’s experiences in the US influenced his actions during the Dublin Lockout of 1913, which was part of a larger transatlantic effort to secure the rights of the working class in the years before the First World War.
The ‘Labor & Dignity’ exhibition is Glucksman Ireland House’s first contribution to the official ‘Decade of Centenaries’ initiative. It is also part of a year-long series of special academic initiatives to mark the twentieth anniversary of Glucksman Ireland House, established as the Center for Irish and Irish American Studies at NTU in 1993. The exhibition was curated by Prof. Marion R. Casey, of Glucksman Ireland House, and Daphne Dyer Wolf, a PhD candidate in history at Drew University in New Jersey. It was designed by Hilary J. Sweeney.
The Trinity Long Room Hub will host the exhibition from December 2013 to February 2014. It is free and open to the public between 9am and 6pm Monday to Friday.
For information on the Trinity Long Room Hub, click here.
For information on Glucksman Ireland House, click here.
For the exhibition programme, click here.