Sophie Overall visits All Hallows’ commemorative exhibition and reflective garden in Drumcondra
Sophie Overall
The burning of Atlanta, Georgia, is perhaps best known to Irish people for its appearance in Gone With The Wind as one of the most famous scenes in the history of cinema, but few in Ireland will know that it was an Irish priest, the Co. Cavan-born Fr Thomas O’Reilly, who was responsible for convincing General William Sherman not to burn the city’s churches, whether his own Catholic chapel or those of the city’s Episcopalian, Baptist, Methodist, or Presbyterian communities.
“He is a hero in the US, but unknown in Ireland,” said Carolanne Henry of the 19th-Century priest, just one of over 7,000 students that All Hallows College in Drumcondra has educated since the college’s foundation in 1842.
Ms Henry is curator of a heritage exhibition the college launched on Wednesday, July 20, to commemorate its legacy, and has played an integral role in going through the extensive amount of information and data that was available from All Hallows’ 174-year history.
Exhibition
“In a broad sense,” she said, “this is an exhibition of the entire heritage of All Hallows from 1842 when it was founded until 2016, when it closed its doors as a third-level college. Previously, we had an exhibition of the college in its missionary days, and we have broadened it out to include the whole story.”
Founded in 1842 by Father John Hand as a missionary College for foreign missions, All Hallows has a history entrenched in bringing awareness of the Faith across nearly every corner of the globe.
Over the years, the college has gone through three different and distinct shifts in its identity. The first stage of was Fr Hand’s missionary college, founded to train priests for foreign missions in English-speaking countries around the world.
Then, in the 1890’s, the Congregation of the Mission, better known as the Vincentians, were invited by Rome to take over the management and running of the then seminary, and ultimately the Institute for Mission and Ministry was created.
The final stage, including adult education and the offering of BA degrees, started in the 1980s and has shaped All Hallows’ most recent years. The third-level college at All Hallows, linked to Dublin City University (DCU) since 1999, has aimed to inspire degrees and courses responding to the need for human service, social justice, and ethical leadership in society, the Church, and culture today.
Operations
In May 2014, however, All Hallows announced a wind down of its operations, and the campus was sold to DCU. This annexation of All Hallows by DCU is the latest phase of a broader expansion programme which will see DCU creating new institutes of education. Nevertheless, even with this new partnership between All Hallows and DCU, the sale will still secure the educational mission of the campus and facilitate existing students in the completion of their studies, and the campus and its assets will be retained within the third-level sector.
The heritage exhibition that was launched on July 20 details and portrays All Hallows from 1842 to 2016 and will form a permanent part of the new DCU campus at All Hallows, acting as a retrospective of the development of All Hallows’ three stages, from missionary college to a third-level university.
It was launched alongside a new reflective garden, both of which were blessed by the papal nuncio, Archbishop Charles Brown. In Dr Brown’s address at the exhibition launch, he paid close attention to this moment of transition that this exhibition marks.
“In this moment of transition between All Hallows and DCU,” he said, continuing, “we must acknowledge the crossroads which mark a transition between what has come in the past, what has come before, and now what comes in the future.
“As we bless this beautiful corridor, it illustrates the heritage the tradition of the history of All Hallows. As the students of DCU see these placards and descriptions of what happened over these years, they will be inspired by the men who studied here and went all throughout the world, carrying the word of God,” he said.
The exhibition contains a contemporary interactive history, timeline and gallery of photographs, in addition to a sample seminarian’s study and two miniature altars that look at life as a missionary priest. The college’s support of the #Ats# is reflected in three Evie Hone sketches for stained-glass windows collected by the college and displayed in the exhibition.
Accessibility
Carolanne walked me through the exhibition from start to finish, pointing out key features of the exhibition that were included to foster an element of contemporary accessibility while simultaneously paying respect to the history and integrity of All Hallows.
One of the first things I noticed upon entering the exhibition is the striking glass door. Carolanne explained why it was important to have such a door as an entrance to the exhibition: “One of the first things we did was convert this into a glass door to welcome people in. It’s a glass door so people can see everything and see down to the chapel as well. I suppose it speaks in a bit of a way to the legacy of the college.”
To the left after the door is a striking interactive podium, with a screen that displays video clips from interviews with different influential people connected to the college. Carolanne continued: “This is an interactive feature with a number of themes, the three themes I suppose, which are the meat and vegetables of the exhibition.
“The three incarnations of the college, initially as a missionary college, then as an institute for Mission and Ministry and then as a third level college. In this interactive feature we talk about the reach of the college.
“There are different video clips of influential figures, such as Kevin Conton. In one video it notes how by the 1870s, half of the priests in Australia were from this college, so it really had an impact.”
When asked why an interactive feature was so prominent a part of the exhibition, Carolanne said that the aim had been to make all the information as easily accessible as possible: “I researched the project and researched our sources of information, and in collaboration with the project management team and the design team, we came up with the best way of communicating our information in a contemporary way.”
On the right of the exhibition a timeline covers the entirety of the wall, with another interactive feature displayed.
Carolanne noted how even though some pieces of information included in the displays are incidental, everything has been included and structured in a way that contextualises it in terms of national and world events, such as the picture of a tree that was on the grounds until it fell down in the 1950s, and had been used to hang rebels of the1798 rebellion.
There are also mock-ups of a seminarian study, and what it might have looked like, Carolanne pointing out that even though it might look quite simple, real effort had been made to include as many of such a study’s typical features as possible.
Graduations
The third interactive section is a list of all the ordinations and graduations in a carousel style on the screen, allowing observers to look and scroll through the chronologically-organised list.
The quality of the photos, Carolanne said, is a key feature of this interactive feature. “We got all of the photographs re-photographed by a professional photographer and enhanced with enhanced resolution,” she explained, continuing, “They are actually better than the original photos.”
Detailing the decline in seminarian numbers that forced the college to change its emphasis, Carolanne said of the section: “We start to see a diminishing number of vocations and men for ordinations, where we have a photo with the highest number of ordinations, which was 44 men, and then the last year of ordinations, 1998, had only two.
“After this we were reincarnated as a college,” she added, “and this is a wall documenting who lived out the Vincentian values.”
After the three interactive features inside the exhibition, the reflective garden welcomes the observer to step outside.
Carolanne characterised the garden as an object of symbolism for All Hallows College.
“The garden is truly symbolic of where people went and explored in the missionary college,” she said, continuing, “We have beds with soil from all over the world. We have a North American bed, and an Asia/Australasia bed. This is really aimed to serve as a reflective garden, for people to come and have a moment of silence or for prayer and reflect.”
This garden is a testament to the international reach of the All Hallows priests of the Missionary College, with sections featuring planting from North America, Asia/Australasia and northern Europe.
A limestone statue of the Madonna and Child, by the noted sculptor Albert Power, has been relocated in the garden from elsewhere on campus, as has the college bell and other #statuary#.
When asked what her role was as curator, Carolanne points to the influence that the space restriction had. “I started out by collecting the data and information, and once that was all gathered, we had to figure out how best to represent that,” she said, continuing, “we were constrained by our space, because it is really a corridor, even though I won’t let anyone call it that”.
“The time line starts from the most recent events in 2016,” she explained, “and then as you walk down along it descends to more historical depictions. To me as a curator it was important to represent and pay homage to the three incarnations of the college.
“The people of the college, over the years, really had a vision that was welcoming of change. When they saw ordinations dropping, they had to answer the question of either closing or continuing. They chose to continue in a way that adapted their mission to fit within a changing and contemporary world.”
History
Carolanne described her favorite part of the exhibition as being the way the history of All Hallows has been contextualised within a global narrative: “I love the way the timeline places the College within national and world events, while highlighting important elements of its own life, and how there is so much data and information in a very accessible way.
“The digital interactions allow us to tell a very detailed story in a very easy to digest way.”
Not only does this exhibition and garden capture nearly 200 years of far-reaching influence that All Hallows has fostered, but it marks an important transition within the College, now in partnership with Dublin City University, to continue inspiring all those to come to visit.