The MoLI - an overJoyced lady!

Culture Night in Dublin this year had an extra-special dimension, with the opening of the Museum of Literature Ireland on St Stephen’s Green, in Newman House, owned by University College Dublin.

UCD Newman House, at 85–86 St Stephen’s Green, was the home of the Catholic University of Ireland, the precursor of University College Dublin. The complex consists of two of the city’s finest Georgian townhouses and the university’s Victorian assembly hall, the Aula Maxima.
The building takes its name from the theologian and educationalist Cardinal John Henry Newman, who was rector when the Catholic University was founded in 1854, recently canonised by Pope Francis.
UCD Newman House also boasts many literary and cultural associations. The poet Gerard Manley Hopkins lived here during his time as Professor of Classics at the university, and James Joyce was a student here before graduating with a BA in 1902. Other famous Irish writers to have studied at UCD Newman House include Flann O’Brien, Kate O’Brien and Maeve Binchy.
Millions were spent - including a €5 million donation from Martin and Carmel Naughton of Stackallen House - on a creative alliance between the National Library’s James Joyce collections and UCD’s most significant historic property, Newman House.
So off you humble scribe ventured to the city centre a couple of weeks ago to see this new Museum of Literature Ireland – ‘MoLI’ for short, and to immerse myself in the stories of the great Irish writers.
To be honest, I was disappointed. It really should be called what it is – a Joyce museum. It’s all about Joyce. The literature does say that: “We take our inspiration from the work of one of Ireland’s most famous writers, James Joyce. As part of our permanent collection, we’re proud to display rare items from the Joyce archive at the National Library of Ireland, including his handwritten Ulysses notebook, and the famous ‘Copy No. 1’ of Ulysses.” I should have realised that by the name of the place anyway – ‘MoLI’!
It’s a smashing exhibition space across three floors, with some interesting pieces and presentations, including a room dedicated to the work of Kate O’Brien, which apparently is going to have a different theme every few months, but I felt there was not adequate space given to all the great writers we have. Okay, it isn’t a library, and it’s hard to cover everybody, but the tokenistic way of including other writers was to hang their photographs or some of their quotations in an entrance hallway for want of a better word, by clothes pegs on strings, so that if they forgot anyone, they could add them in afterwards.
Being a parochial sort, I expected to see much more about Bective writer Mary Lavin (the lady in the book shop downstairs had never even heard of the UCD alumnus – but at least she was an Oisin Fagan fan!). Lavin got a quotation on the clothes line, with a photo of Francis Ledwidge nearby. This hanging of writers is called ‘Joyce’s Century of Writers’ – see what I mean when I say it’s all about Jimmy!
There were staff falling over themselves to explain things, in all I encountered nine people, some paid, some volunteers, some obsessives, wanting to chat with me.
I suppose I didn’t know what to expect going into a museum of literature, and while it is a fine facility with some great installations – like ‘A River Run of Language’, and ‘Dear, Dirty Dublin’ - and an interesting section on censorship and Irish writing, I didn’t get the feeling that it was a Museum of Literature Ireland, or aimed at a homegrown audience. More like another Joycean enterprise to beguile the international tourists visiting the capital city.