The world’s largest collection of famine-related art, by noted Irish and Irish-American artists, has come to Ireland for the very first time. Fifty artworks, on loan from Ireland’s Great Hunger Museum, at Quinnipiac University, offer an incomparable direct link to the past, making it an important gesture of cultural reconnection. No part of the country, no religious group escaped the famine – it was the migration crisis of the 19th

century. The impact of the Great Hunger (1845-52) is still with us. It has shaped our history, our landscape, our politics, our culture and our

character. For these reasons each new generation should know the scale of the Famine, the horror of it, and how it permeated everything.