Behind the Scenes at the Museum

In Febrary 2021, in the midst of a Covid lockdown Brenda Malone, curator at the National Museum of Ireland, provided a wonderful virtual tour of the museum at Collins Barracks in Dublin for my MA students in Liverpool. The class ended in the museum’s stores where Brenda showed the students some of the objects kept there. At the very end, and as a special treat for me, she showed the students my favourite objects in the museum - Michael Collins’ beautiful wolf slippers. I tweeted a photo of them which went viral.

It turned out Brenda and I weren’t the only two people who were fascinated by footwear. The slippers appeared on television, in newspapers, as memes, became t-shirts, were embroidered onto cushions….

A few months ago Brenda and I were reunited with the slippers (and they were just as amazing as ever). You can see them in all their glory in this episode of Brainstorm which was broadcast on RTE One on 2nd May (from 5 mins in).

Click on the image to watch the Brainstorm

Alongside the slippers we look at some other gems that are in the museum stores. Keeping with the footwear theme we examine Harry Boland’s boots, which saved him from a treason charge and a bullet in a brick - one of the bullets killed Francis Sheehy Skeffington in 1916. It was a real treat to tell stories about well-known figures from Irish history using objects that could easily have been thrown away. The fact that they weren’t and that they now form part of our national collection helps up tell more nuanced, richer and more interesting stories than if we were relying on offical sources alone. Every object has a tale to tell and as curators and historians it’s our job and our privilege to tell their stories.