Evolving the story - Artist responses at 14 Henrietta Street

14 Henrietta Street​ is not a museum in the traditional sense: it doesn’t exist just to capture a building in one period of time. It is a place that is living and breathing again after a long period of time lying dormant and derelict, a place that can now remember, evolve and create new memories for its visitors.

But how exactly do we remember, evolve and create new memories?

Historians, former residents and their families, visitors, and other experts all play a crucial role. In producing the museum experience, historians worked closely with former residents, and continue to do so, ensuring the human stories are as prominent as the documented historical facts. As a result of this approach, our collection is unique.

The building itself is the main artefact but oral histories collected from former tenement residents and their families represent 25% of the collection, while physical artefacts, a selection of objects from the building’s ‘tenement era’, c.1870s to 1970s, make up a further 20% of the collection.

However, there are other voices and perspectives which help us to evolve the story and offer a deeper or different understanding. Artistic responses have been an integral part of the museum’s development since its inception and now make up 5% of the museum collection.

Site-specific theatre pieces by ANU were commissioned by Dublin City Council in 2013 and 2017, as well as an audio tour by artists Sonya Kelly, Shaun Dunne and Paula Meehan, which went on to be part of Dublin Theatre Festival in 2019.

We worked with prominent Irish poet Paula Meehan, who grew up in the tenements, to create MUSEUM - a book of 11 specially created sonnets alongside photographic artworks by Dragana Jurišić, all taking their inspiration from the fabric of the house.

Both Paula’s words and Dragana’s photography beautifully capture the story of the building and the lives lived in it. ‘MUSEUM’ is unique to 14 Henrietta Street and allows people to take home a piece of the museum and to reflect on and to share its story.

While Covid scuppered some other planned residencies in 2020 and 2021, we continued to involve artists in our online programming at the time, through Teatime Talks, our series of talks inspired by the history, people and surroundings of 14 Henrietta Street.

This included talks with theatre director Louise Lowe and architectural photographer Ros Kavanagh, and a livestream of an on-site performance by members of Dublin-based band A Lazarus Soul. Since then, Teatime Talks has continued to regularly feature artists and makers.

On our guided tours, artistic elements are used to further bring parts of the story to life. For example, in a bedroom an audio-visual rendition of one of Paula Meehan’s specially commissioned poems, This Bed, This Raft on Stormy Seas, imagines the journey of a bed donated to the museum.

The bed belonged to ​Dr. Bartholomew Mosse, a local man who had the vision to build and fundraise for the first purpose-built maternity hospital in the world, located just around the corner from ​14 Henrietta Street​.Built in 1745, his hospital served the many families who resided in the house throughout its history, offering them better conditions for childbirth and improving infant mortality rates which were extremely high.

Further along the tour in our playroom, traditional songs, collected through an intergenerational workshop with local residents and sung by primary school children, fills the air. It is not unusual for groups to join in with the childhood songs of the playroom, and impromptu singalongs have taken place at the piano in our replica of former resident Mrs Dowling’s flat.

As a museum, 14 Henrietta Street does not have a curator. In creating a visitor experience and a programme, we respond to what we learn from listening - to former residents, to historians, to experts, visitors, and to artists. This museum is as much about what people impart to us as what we impart to them. In doing this, artists become important mediators, revealing something we hadn’t considered before and prompting us to reflect on who we are.

In autumn 2024 we will be announcing our next Artists in Residence at 14 Henrietta Street. Click here to see details of the Open Call, inviting Artists to apply for a residency.