The Titanic Museum in Belfast is slightly misleading insofar as it encompasses much more than the Titanic tragedy. The first portion of the exhibit is dedicated to an exploration of early-twentieth-century Belfast, which was nicknamed Linenopolis because of its linen production. It was fascinating to read about linen production and to see its production in various phases. The museum engages visitors on a variety of tactile and technological levels as early-twentieth-century Belfast comes alive through multiple moving screens, interactive maps, and still exhibits.

There’s a fun 4D ride halfway through the exhibit that allows visitors to see, hear, and feel what it may have been like to work on the Titanic’s hull. I enjoyed seeing examples of class-based living quarters and reading survival accounts of the sinking.

A few things in the exhibit reminded me of themes we’ve discussed over the last few weeks. In the portion of the exhibit dedicated to the building of the Titanic, a narrator mentions that the Titanic was often referred to as the pride of Belfast. In this way, the city’s identity was intertwined with this feat of engineering. Tickets were given away and sold so that spectators could witness the Titanic being launched. This representation of Belfast as a lively, thriving city stands in marked contrast to the paralysis of Dublin represented in much of the literature we’ve read and studied.

Something else that stood out to me was a section devoted to the captain of the Titanic. There are many accounts of where he was and what he was doing as the boat sank. All of them are heroic. These various and contradictory accounts speak to the human tendency to mythologize and/or canonize tragic figures.

Overall, I greatly enjoyed the museum not only for its fascinating history of the Titanic but for its larger contextual history of Belfast.

Although not connected to Irish literature or history, the Vermeer exhibit at the National Gallery of Ireland highlights the evolution of Dublin from Joycean poverty and paralysis to contemporary cosmopolis. As I perused the paintings in the exhibit, one of the first things I noticed about almost all of them was the use of chiaroscuro, which gives the paintings incredible depth and makes many of them appear three dimensional.

The intertextuality of the paintings is remarkable. It is fascinating to see paintings within paintings and different renderings of the same subject matter. This intertextuality reminded me of the different scholarly approaches taken when analyzing literature. Each is beautiful, valuable, and relevant in its own right and, in most cases, analyses and theory, like these paintings, builds on what comes before it.

Among this coterie of artists there seems to have existed a healthy balance of rivalry and support. It’s reminiscent of other relationships between successful artists such as Yeats and Joyce as illustrated in Joyce’s letters at the Yeats exhibit at the National Library. What is meaningful to me in both examples is that the artists were better for being challenged and supported by their peers. Academia can be a difficult, contentious, and somewhat exclusive environment. Although I resist the urge to idealize the relationships among the Dutch masters, it’s clear that the artistic circle in which they moved engendered greater creativity and skill through amicable interaction. In the last portion of the exhibit, the older master was inspired by a younger artist, which is a good lesson in humility and is  sometimes necessary for progress.