Much of the history of Ireland is a history of emigration, sometimes in search of new opportunities, but most often to escape from poverty, famine or political oppression. That’s true of many other places, of course, but between famine and emigration, 19th-century Ireland lost so much of its population it has become a focus in Irish culture.
EPIC, which calls itself the Irish Emigration Museum, grows out of that, and is the project of a successful businessman who returned to Ireland long after his family left. Neville Isdell and developed both the museum and the Custom House Quay, a commercial and retail project in an 1820s warehouse. The museum is in the basement.
The museum is visually stunning, with many interactive exhibits (and a passport that you can stamp in each exhibit room), but it seems to be of two minds what its message is. The visit starts from the stunning ship seen at the top, which symbolizes emigrants shooting out in all directions.
The first few rooms examine emigration in very broad, even universal terms, using animated and video-infused displays, it looks at the historical, political and cultural forces that led to emigration, and the class and religious backgrounds of those who left. It did an excellent job of placing the 19th century mass emigration in context with earlier periods, including when England and Ireland were under Cromwell’s rule.
And then, as if a switch had been flipped, the exhibits flip from education to Irish Pride. The second half of the museum is like a Hall of Famous Irish People Who Became Famous Somewhere Else. Musicians, politicians, artists, scientists—the whole gamut of occupations. Not that there’s no place for that, but it was overwhelming, and after a few rooms, not that interesting.
It took me weeks to realize what I think would have made it a much better museum: it needs rooms that reflect on what the emigrants faced when they arrived on other shores. For all the famous folks in EPIC, there were hundreds of thousands who didn’t become famous, who faced grinding years of work, poverty and discrimination on their way to becoming integral parts of society all over the world—surely that, too, is a key aspect of the emigration story.
