Dublin Museum Celebrates Irish Authors
The $12 million museum, nine years in the making, draws inspiration from the work of James Joyce, the country's most renowned writer.
The 12,000-square-foot, four-floor Museum of Literature Ireland (MoLI) opens this summer in Dublin. A collaboration between University College Dublin and the National Library of Ireland, MoLI draws inspiration from the work of the country’s most renowned writer, James Joyce. (Its initials echo the first name of his best-known female character, Molly Bloom.)
The $12 million museum, nine years in the making, celebrates Ireland’s literary culture and heritage. It includes the first copy of Joyce’s Ulyssesand his handwritten notebooks for various episodes in that novel, as well as William Butler Yeats’s Nobel Prize medal. Exhibitions at MoLI will spotlight past and present Irish writers and will be accompanied by immersive multimedia exhibitions, lectures, performances, and cutting-edge children’seducation programs.
The museum occupies the historic Newman House, originally the Catholic University of Ireland, where Joyce graduated in 1902. Still standing in what is now MoLI’s reading garden is the oak tree where his graduation photo was taken.